Sunday, May 29, 2011

Weekly Schedule for May 30-June 5, 2011

Weather and unforeseen conditions can/will change the schedule.
On Monday we will apply fertilizer to the collars to see if we can't get them growing in a little faster.
Tuesday we will dust the greens with some sand.
A heat wave is expected Monday through Wednesday so we will be focusing on watering.

Installation of drip irrigation on bunker faces should start this week. There will be an upcoming post on this topic in the near future.

Have a great Memorial Day!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Native Fescue Rough

This morning we mowed the native fescue rough between holes #2 and #10. Eventually we'd like to look into making this actual rough due to the high amount of golf balls that go into this area.



Sunday, May 22, 2011

Weekly Schedule- May 23-29, 2011

Weather and unforeseen conditions can/will change the schedule.

Monday-Light verticut and topdressing of greens
Tuesday-DryJect (see previous collar post from last week) of driving range tee, tees on hole #2 and rest of collars not completed last week. Work on driving range tees to be completed before 7:30 am.

-Native rough will be mowed between holes #2 and #10.
-Continued seeding of thin areas in fairways

Friday, May 20, 2011

Fairway Seeding

This week we are working on seeding some of the thinner areas in fairways. We aerify, clean up the plugs, slit seed in two directions then topdress. Here are some pictures of the process.





Monday, May 16, 2011

Collars

Today we began injecting our collars with a material called Profile. This material is an inorganic soil amendment. The machine used to inject the Profile into the rootzone is called a DryJect. In less then a second it shoots water into the collar creating a hole then quickly fills it with Profile creating a clean process.

Here's an underground look at the finished product:


The reason we are doing this is because the collars dry out quicker then the rest of the greens. As can be seen in the photo above there are several layers in the rootzone from previous sodding which does not allow the water to penetrate very deep. Once it does, this is what it looks like below the top few inches:

We did a soil physical analysis and discovered that water moves through this sand at an amazing 110 inches per hour! Very hard to keep moist when water moves through so fast.

While one application of the Profile will not solve this issue, it is a step towards the right direction in getting a bit more moisture into the rootzone of the collars.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Weekly Schedule- May 16-22, 2011

Starting today I will be posting a blog each Sunday in regards to the schedule for the upcoming week. I'll be able to post any maintenance practices that are out of the routine. But please remember, weather and unforeseen conditions can/will change the schedule.

This week we are focusing on re-seeding areas in fairways that did not recover from last year. These areas will be marked as ground under repair with a white paint line around them. Please remove your ball from these areas if it should land in them. Once the fairways are complete we will move on to rough. This Fall we will re-seed all these areas along with aerification.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Verticutting

This morning we began the process of lightly verticutting greens. This has not been done for quite some time at Fieldstone. We are very excited as this process will smooth the greens surface while removing unwanted organic matter. This is followed by a dusting of sand to help smooth the surface even more.

It is called verticutting because the blades are vertical as can be seen in this picture:


The verticutters are placed on a triplex and driven across the green:



Here is a close up look afterwards:



We go to a depth of about 1/8 of an inch:


In putting the greens afterwards I noticed an immediate difference in the improvement of the ball roll across the greens.  Verticutting will be a weekly or bi-weekly practice throughout the Spring.




Friday, May 6, 2011

Creek Project Update-May 6, 2011

The creek renovation is quickly coming to a close. Today we are sodding the access road across #15.




Once completed we will move to the greenside of the creek on #15 to repair the areas made by the tractors while placing the rocks. Also, all other areas (#2, #10, #13 and #14) have been seeded with Fescues.