Weekly Schedule for October 27-November 2, 2014

Weather and unforeseen conditions can/will change the schedule.

-Topdress greens as needed to ensure all aerification holes are filled
-Move irrigation heads around greens
--Mulch, blow and pick up leaves

Fall Aerification Update-10.22.14

We were able to complete aerification on Tuesday except for the topdressing of greens #14-17. Today is too wet to properly topdress so we will wait until Thursday or Friday. Besides topdressing, our main objective will be to clean the piles of fairway cores that are located on the cart paths this week.

Fall Aerification Update-10.21.14

Would like to share some links to previous blog posts regarding our aerification process.

Greens Aerification

Fairway Aerification

Yesterday we had frost until 9:00 am which resulted in a 2.5 hour delay. We were able to finish aerifiying all the greens and cleaned up the majority of the plugs. The majority of the fairways were also aerified and plugs picked up. Today we are applying soil amendments to the greens then topdressing and brushing the sand into the holes. Fairways will be completed by early afternoon. Tee aerification has begun and hope to finish that today as well.

Weekly Schedule for October 20-26, 2014

Weather and unforeseen conditions can/will change the schedule.

-Aerification of all greens, tees and fairways on Monday and Tuesday
-Seeding of secondary rough with hard fescue

Secondary Rough Seeding Update 10.17.14

We hope to have the hillside to the left of #18 fairway seeded today. Next area to be seeded is the  hillside to the left of #15 tees. Then to the front entrance road.

The first area that was seeded on #3 looks like this.

While this may look spotty and thin, it is actually an excellent stand for Hard Fescue one month after seeding. This is a very fragile and finicky grass to get established. We do not expect to see more growth until about Memorial Day. During the summer of 2015 there will be no seededhead formation from these grasses. It will be a battle to keep weeds away until full establishment.

To the left of #16 tees we seeded Turf Type Tall Fescue (TTTF) to me mowed at primary rough height. Unlike Hard Fescue, the TTTF grows faster and fills in rapidly. Barring any unforseen weather events the TTTF will be fully established in late spring. As can be seen in this photo it is already well established just a few weeks after seeding.

Weekly Schedule for October 13-19, 2014

Weather and unforeseen conditions can/will change the schedule.

-Prepare and seed secondary roughs with Hard Fescue

Secondary Rough Seeding

We have been very pleased with germination of the Hard Fescue that has been seeded thus far. In an upcoming post I will discuss what can be expected in terms of results for the next 1-3 years. For now I'd like to give some insight into how the seeding is actually done.

Most of the secondary rough is on steep hills and requires an enormous amount of hand work to prep and seed. Therefore we obtained a machine that can do most of this work for us in an efficient and safe manner. It is called a Ventrac and has a seeder/aeravator attachment.

The machine has 8 tires and sits low to the ground. The spikes on the aeravator vibrate when lowered into the ground providing a nice seedbed. At the same time that the aeravator is working, seed is dropping from the seed box on top working it's way into the soil.

While there are still some areas that need to be done by hand, the majority of the work is done with this machine making it a much more efficient process.

Weekly Schedule for October 6-12, 2014

Weather and unforeseen conditions can/will change the schedule.

-Prepping/seeding Fine Fescue in Secondary Roughs
-Turf Type Tall Fescue seeding in green surrounds
-Repair of rock walls around #13 tees
-Sodding of fairway entrances on #5
-Repair of irrigation leak at #15 green surround