Carmel Country Club Agronomy

  Almost 4 inches of rain has come out of the sky since last Thursday. There is no debate that we needed some moisture but the real welcome was some of the humidity that came along with the rain. Our warm season is finally being encouraged to green up and clock in for the growing season now.  That was around 7 different rain events in the past week which kept us plenty busy repairing and grooming bunkers as a few of the storms came down at a rate close to 2" of rain per hour.  This is the highest we have seen the creek get since last August when 6" dropped in. This overflow area between 13 South and down between 7 and 12 could use some work this winter to encourage a better route to the creek. The college guys cleaning out the overflow in preparation for the next storm and adding to their resume. Definitely some challenges in keeping this lake clean! The pushmowers came out early in the week while we waited for a dry 24 hours in order to get the big machines out. The gree...

  That is another two week stretch without a drop of rain. For fun we went ahead and tied the high temperature record for May 20th on Wednesday at 95 degrees here on property. Monday and Tuesday were not far behind at 93 and 94 degrees. On Tuesday we saw an incredible .3" evapotranspiration rate meaning it could of rained over a quarter inch Monday night (it didn't) and all that moisture would of been gone by Tuesday afternoon. Our sprinkler system, acid injection, turfrad and handwater crew have been working hard this spring. High temps or not we were scheduled to get some solid tine holes punched in tees, approaches and fairways this week. Our two tractor aerators made it through the zoysia on the South by Tuesday afternoon poking holes on a 4 inch spacing about 2.5 inches down. These holes will help with gas exchange in the soil, water infiltration and give the roots some air space to invade. With both courses drying out quickly this week we decided to wait until the North ...

  The team has put together two solid golf courses for this weeks Pro Am event. We more than likely have seen our last night time temperatures in the 40's. 90's are on the way along with more humidity next week. The warm season turf continues to wake up and the zoysia is trying to find its summer glow. The turfrad system is performing well in order to help keep all these fairways and approaches as consistent as possible. Next week we are set to poke some solid tine holes in the tees, approaches and fairways on both courses. As the warm season turf wakes up, roots will begin to look deeper for air and water. These solid tine holes do almost nothing to impact golf play but will help us establish a strong root system for the season moving forward. In addition to the solid tine we will be spreading compost in high traffic rough areas. The compost also helps improve water infiltration as well as build nutrition in the soil. With an outing set for Monday we will have the South course...

  Two inches of rain is all we needed to get the pond over flowing again. This rain event is the highest amount we have seen in one day in 6 months! The stream is behaving so far but will no doubt leave some debris behind. The turf has needed this heavy drink for a few weeks now. We had a few clogged drains here and there, especially in the 7/12 South area. Everything is receding now and we are more than excited to see how the turf reacts with some moisture in the ground. The city came and inspected our ponds a few weeks ago. They asked us to bolster the spillway here on 12 North so we added about 50 tons of riprap this week before the storm. All 5 pumps and motors at the pumphouse have been working overtime these last 6 weeks. Overall everything has performed properly. We noticed a check valve slamming shut last week so went in to replace it on Tuesday. Two valves ended up being bad so both were replaced. The check valve holds back the entire irrigation system at 125 psi just befo...