Looking good as we take a peak at Summer next week

 

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 closed until 3pm on Tuesday and the North course closed until 3pm on Wednesday to get this work done.


The greens on both courses have performed beautifully this week. Our fixed head mowers are setup very aggressively at the moment in order to produce some "tournament" speeds. As heat and humidity show up over the next few weeks, health of the bentgrass on the South will remain top priority over green speed. The Turfbreeze fans will begin their annual march out to the green surrounds over the next few weeks as well.


Mid-May marks when the fescue in the native areas want to go to seed. We have mowed these areas a number of times through the spring and now have applied a growth regulator to help them slow regular growth and hopefully just look pretty with a seed head for the next few months. 


With the Pro am out on the course and some closures next week we have started to repaint the tee markers as time allows. Each marker is pulled and taken to the powdercoater for a fresh coat of "copper veins" powdercoat. This brown texture gives a more finished look to the marker and matches the metal on the driving range furniture. We are hand painting the candlestick the appropriate color to match the scorecard yardage.


Both South and North crews have been lending a hand to the Landscape squad as the pool is set to open on Saturday.


We also found ourselves moving umbrellas back to the pool and helping installing new umbrellas and bases on the back terrace.


Enjoy another beautiful weekend of weather, we will be paying for all these dry blue sky days at some point!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to Carmel's Agronomy Blog!

Image
  Greetings all and welcome to the first post of Carmel's Agronomy blog. This page will be updated most Thursday afternoons by myself (Chris Harriman, Director of Agronomy) or by South Course Superintendent Micah Pennybaker or North Course Superintendent Eric Downs. My first order of business here is to thank both Micah and Eric for getting this property through one of the toughest summers on record. Our goal of enhancing the golf experience at Carmel by promoting healthy and consistent conditions is set and we are off and running. Although this is our first post for Carmel, this is about the 900th blog post of my career. Each of those 900 posts were from golf courses with bentgrass greens. Diving into the consistency and conditions of the South Course greens is not just a priority it is a passion! So far, we have modified greens mower setups including changing out rollers and lowering heights while increasing additional rolling frequency. The water has been turned down, Subairs tu...
Read more

South greens aeration complete

Image
  This past Monday for aeration week did not start out exactly how we would of liked. Another nationwide long severe thunderstorm rolled through with some serious wind and frigid air behind it. Thankfully less than an inch of rain was observed and not much of it was in the form of hail although we could make out some tiny indentations on the North greens from what may of been a quick hail storm at some point. One huge oak uprooted right of 11 South and it did some damage to other surrounding oaks as well. In addition to aeration we were also tasked with cleaning up this area. The North team came over to help out and the main positive is that much more sunlight will be coming through in the afternoon to help keep 11 approach a little drier. While our kids sat home from school on Monday we ran out and got started with aeration. 6 greens were cored with 3/8" tines and blown off before the storms rolled through.  The SavATree guys were the only ones that braved the afternoon rain ...
Read more

Beautiful weather for golf!

Image
  80 degrees and low humidity is ideal for golf but we sure could use a little rain for the turf out there. A big focus over the past few weeks has been identifying irrigation issues and making sure the zoysia on the south stays healthy going into dormancy. This head for example on 18, was stuck in the same position and needed to be replaced. A stuck head quickly leads to a section of the approach area to be wet and then the rest of the turf it was responsible for watering to be dry. In addition to the water quality issues we discussed last week, we are working to come up with a plan to solve how to best deliver water to the turf all across the property. The cooler nights allowed us to put the verticutter out on the bentgrass greens this week. The vertical blades were set to just tickle the top of the turf, slicing any longer leaf blades and helping tighten up the bent. A light dusting of sand topdressing followed the verticutter.  The more aggressive greens groomer brush fol...
Read more