Winter Projects

Hello and welcome to 2020.  I never got around to writing a December blog and I apologize for that.  Between everyone taking their time off and the holidays, time got away from me.  In this month's post I will go over the work that we accomplished in December and what we plan to do for the next couple months.  I often get asked, "what do you guys do during the winter?"  The answer.......Prepare the golf course and equipment for next year.  There is never a "perfect" year and there is always something to improve upon.

The main points of focus this winter have been and will be:

• Remove dead and dying trees
• Remove trees that are hindering proper growth of putting greens
• Improvement of the driving range tee
• Drainage in certain tee boxes

So far, we have removed 13 dead trees and still have a handful left to get.  We are working around the clubhouse parking lot at the moment since the snowfall has limited our golf course access.  Aside from being ugly, dead trees pose a danger to all that are on the course and must be removed.  We are also working on removing living trees around some of the greens in order to improve putting quality throughout the year.  We have taken 4 down behind 11 green which held the green under nearly full shade until around 10:00 am.  Morning sun is the most important to turfgrass and especially greens.  With #11 getting full sun now and the unclogging of the drain that I noted in November's blog, I believe that putting quality will be much improved on that green.  Also the entire greens complex should be much drier and firmer from now on.  We plan on taking 4-5 trees down behind #12 green for the same reasons.  And yes, I do plan on removing the large sycamore 10 feet to the left of #13 green.  I know that it is a good looking tree, but it is absolutely ruining that green.  It remains in the shade all day which really keeps it from drying out and especially since that side of the green is the low point.  The roots of that tree are also all up in the rootzone of that green competing against the green's roots for water and nutrients. 

Before this latest snow event, Grant and I spent 2 weeks working on the driving range tee.  This area needs a lot of help.  The plan for this winter is to improve the irrigation and then next year improve the drainage.  The south half of the tee is watered by large golf heads like the ones you will find on the course.  This is good, however due to issues in the past, all 6 heads have been wired up to run at the same time.  This is not good.  That ruins the pressure and when the streams of water cross each other, it creates a downpour in the middle.  Just like Egon said, "Don't cross the streams!"

The North side is irrigated by little home lawn sprinklers that are controlled by battery powered timers. Less than ideal.  Since we have no maps of the irrigation system Grant and I basically dug holes just to find out what was underground and how the system up there was put together.  Some of  these holes ended up being 5 feet deep! We figured out the wiring part of the problem and will have it to where sprinklers will be grouped by 2 or 3's and will be linked into our central control system.  This is a huge milestone.  Once the snow melts we will trench in new irrigation pipe and wire in order to add new golf heads on the North side to replace the home lawn heads.  This will allow us to water the range tee more consistently.  As we dug all these holes, we noticed the soil makeup of the tee is pretty bad.  Just below the grass layer is about 2-3 inches of a good sand based mix, but then below that is some nasty clay.  No wonder that tee doesn't drain for squat!  We will watch the new irrigation work this year and see what improvements that brings.  Next off-season we will probably need to install some pretty extensive drain lines through the entire tee.  In the meantime, we can get aggressive with the deep tiner and sand.

Speaking of tee box drainage, we are real close to trenching #7 and #8 tee drains.  We will be installing drain lines in the blue and black tees on #8.  There are a lot of tees that are just unusable after a heavy rain, but I feel 8 is the worst.  The lines will run from North to South and end up the the creek to the right of the tees.  #7 will have 1 long trench line running through the native from the back of the black tee to the front of the blue tee.  My theory is that a lot of water comes from that hillside and the neighborhood into those tees and makes them unplayable.  This might end up only being step 1 if those tees remain soaked.  If that is the case then lines will be installed just like on #8.  

Well I hope everybody had a fun and safe new years and I look forward to seeing you all back on the course in 2020.