Cold Temperatures

We knew the cold weather was coming. The temperature fell into the low 20's at the end of last week and we actually went out and covered 7 of our weak and shaded greens on Friday night of last week.  The process went very smooth on Friday when we put them out and on Saturday when we removed them and folded them up. With the weather forecast this week we had planned on putting them out sometime on Monday and not removing them until Wednesday at the earliest.  The forecast for Monday kept getting worse and worse over the weekend so the decision was made that we would close the course on Monday as well as our normal closed day on Tuesday. This meant that we could start putting out covers first thing Monday morning.  The process did not go quite as smoothly as it had on Friday. When we started Monday morning the temperature was about 35 degrees with 20 MPH winds. The temperature was not a problem but the winds make putting covers on and getting them to stay on pretty tough. These covers can become giant kites very quickly if you aren't careful. The temperature this morning (Tuesday) was 10 Degrees, so I think it was a pretty good decision to put the covers on the Greens. Below are some pictures that we snapped while putting the covers out.

Turning boards for mowing greens

We are now using turning boards when mowing greens. We started using them in the fall and will keep using them through the winter and early spring. This should help reduce the amount of sod work that must be done around greens due to wear from mowing greens in the winter.  The mowers take 4 boards each and they lay them at each side of the green and turn the mower on them after each pass. This keeps the mower off of the turf while turning. After about 6 or 8 passes they must stop and move the boards over and then continue on. This did add some time to the mowing process but we have found that we can use 5 mowers and get done in the same amount of time that it takes when we normally use 4. This is not a problem in the fall and winter when the rest of the golf course is slowing down and we can use more guys to focus on things like this. Below are a few pictures of the guys using the boards.

Rye Tees

The rye tees came up nicely. It only took a few short weeks before we were able to get the first cut on them. The picture below is one of the first cuts that we put on the tees.

Wet Start to the Winter

It has been a while since our last post because there have been a lot of new things going on around the Great Waters maintenance department. I have been taking many pictures of projects and routine maintenance items that we have been getting done over the last few months and I am going to try to get a few of them uploaded over the next few days. A quick update on the amount of rainfall we have had lately, over 3.5" of rain has fallen since right before Thanksgiving. This does not sound like much compared to the massive amounts of rain that we were getting in the spring but it has just been a cold wet drizzle most of the time so it has not been the best working conditions to get anything done on a golf course. However, we are pushing through it and getting a few projects done here and there.

Overseeding Practice Facility tees and par 3 tees

We took advantage of the rain earlier this week and got our rye grass seed down on our tees. The rain helps to get the seed worked into the Bermudagrass and saves us from having to run so much irrigation. The rain was not supposed to be here until Wednesday afternoon, which was our closed day this week. So the plan was to scalp the tees on Tuesday afternoon and drop the seed on Wednesday morning.  Well it was raining when we got here on Tuesday morning so that plan had to be changed. It rained on and off all day on Tuesday so we decided to try and scalp the tees and drop the seed right behind the mower on Tuesday afternoon. It was hard, wet work and we had to take extra precautions to keep the seed dry but we finnally got it done about 5:00 on Tuesday afternoon. Here are a few pictures of the whole process. You can see we do two double pass clean up laps and then 2 directions to fill in the tees with the drop spreaders. You can actually see the rain coming down in the last 2 pictures.

Photoshoot #11

On Tuesday August 27th we had a marketing photo shoot on hole #11 at Great Waters. We were split tee that day starting at 8:00 AM on holes 1 and 10, so this did not give them much time for the shoot. The team also wanted all of the dew off of the hole before they started taking pictures. We sent the majority of our crew to 11 and in 20 minutes we had the entire hole mowed out. This included mowing the green, tees, perimeter, fairway, and rough, we also flymowed around the bunkers and the shoreline, blew out the bunkers and raked around the bunkers.  I wish we could have had a time-lapse camera set up on the tee to catch all of this action because it was pretty neat to watch it all come together. Here are a few pictures of the marketing team taking their pictures.

Rain, Rain, and More rain

Just an update on the amout of rain that we have gotten this summer.

May was not bad with only 4" of rain. June also saw a small amount with about 3.5".  Then July got here and we got 16" of rain, and so far in the month of August we have received almost 7" of rain.  I took the following pictures on Monday of this week after the bad storms Sunday night. We have river rock in a lot of our drainage areas and I have never seen it rain so hard or run off so fast that it washes the river rock out onto the golf course but as you can see from the photos it did this time. 

The pond on #2 full of debris

You can see just how far the water went out onto the green in this picture.

Aerification 7-30-13

This past week we performed our big yearly aerification on greens. We did a 5/8" hole on a 2X2.5 spacing. Our process was very similar to what we did in the spring with a few minor adjustments. We Double verticut Greens, Top dressed heavy, aerified with core harvester attachements, cleaned up the plugs by hand, brushed 3 times, rolled, then lightly blew off. The next day we put out all of our amenentments. We also used these 2 closed days to aerify tees and double verticut all of our fairways. 

 Here is #1 being aerified, after the verticutting and top dressing. You can also see the verticut units in the fairway here.

This was 2 days after aerification.

Soggy start to July

We have had a very wet start to the month of July. It has been a wet spring and summer already but the month of July has just been miserable to be working outdoors. In the last 5 days we have had just over 6 inches of rain. And these are not just small showers with a little rain these are torrential downpours that create washouts in our bunkers, on the cart paths, and in the mulch beds.  We have been able to clean everything up just about everyday.  The guys are growing weary of pushing up bunkers but we will do it everyday we have too. We are just very thankful for the bunker renovation that we were able to perform 4 years ago or we would still be pumping out the 1.6" of rain that we got last Wednesday, then the 1.9" on Thursday, then the 1.1" on Friday, then the 0.5" on Saturday, and the 1.0" on Sunday. For the most part we have dodged the strong winds that have been associated with these storms.  Here are a few pictures that I took over the weekend.

New Drainage 14 Tee

Last week we were closed for 2 days in a row and we took advantage of these two days to complete a drainage project on 14 Tee that was long over due.  We ran drainage from the number 1 tee box past the 2 tee box and then down to the lake.  The project was completed just like all of the drainage projects in the winter. First, the sod was stripped, then the trench was excavated with a mini-excavator, next a thin layer of gravel went into the bottom of the trench, then the slotted pipe placed onto the top of the gravel, after that the pipe is covered in gravel and the trench is filled to about 4 inches below ground level with gravel, next a layer of sand goes down on top of the gravel, and finally the sod that was removed earlier gets put back onto the top of the trench.  We had a few things working against us in this project. First, there is not much fall from the back of the number 2 tee to the front of it and it is a large tee. Therefore, we had to be very precise when digging our trench and constantly checking with the transit to make sure that we had enough fall for the water to run to the lake. Secondly, the irrigation line for 14 Tee runs directly in the lowest point of the ditch that we were running our drainage in.  This forced us to move over a few feet and run parallel to the line, trying to stay as close to the bottom of the wet area without hitting the irrigation line.