Catch Basin

This week we installed a new catch basin on the left of #3 approach. For those of you who have been members a while, I'm sure you know that this is an area where we often have problems when it rains. The smaller drain often gets clogged by leaves, sticks and other debris and then the water backs up. To remedy this we put in a large storm drain with larger gaps between the grates which will keep it from getting clogged and overflowing onto the fairway.

Old catch basin with the cap already taken off. It's a 6" pipe.

New catch basin installed with drainage tied in.

Back filled and rough graded. We will do a final grade and then seed the area.

With this bigger basin installed we shouldn't ever have to deal with this again.

Hope everyone has a great Labor Day Weekend!
Ian

Moss, course damage and enfranchisement.

Toward the end of August we start going after the moss that is in our greens. Over the last few years we've been able to knock it back a bit, however moss is hardy and keeps coming back. Last week we sprayed moss with a product called Quicksilver for the first time this year and we are already seeing good results. We'll probably put another three or four applications out before the year is out. It really does a nice job on the moss and hopefully we can continue to reduce the amount we have in the greens.

Moss pre-application.

Moss post-application

There was a little bit of damage this week on the golf course that wasn't self inflicted. Two nights last week someone went joy riding on the course and drove across some greens. They didn't really do any damage to the course, but they did break/lose a few flag sticks in the process. It wasn't a big deal, but we're glad that it wasn't any worse. There are many horror stories of vandalism and luckily we won't have any to tell anytime soon. Also, there was some damage in the middle of #10 fairway from the fireworks last Saturday night. It looks pretty bad right now, but I'm guessing most of it will grow back and whatever doesn't we will repair. 

#8 green. Notice the tire tracks. 

#10 fairway. 

Finally, I've figured out how to add polls to the blog homepage. I'll start asking questions about the course and have you vote on them. My first question is about green speed. I've had it up for a few days and I'm the only person who voted when I checked to see if I had it set up properly. So, if you're reading this blog from your email, please come to the page and vote! It will be valuable feed back for us. Thanks!

Ian

Storm damage and a few other things.

In the past 48 hours we had storms with heavy winds and lots of rain, 1.97" to be exact, which made the course very wet and messy with tree litter and also washed out some bunkers. We spent today addressing the bunkers and starting to clean up a tree that fell behind #4 black tee. The bunkers took the worst of it, but the guys got around today and most of them are put back together and will be in great shape as they dry out more. The next few days look like they are going to be really nice, so the course should dry out pretty quickly and we can get off the paths and back to normal.

Tree that snapped off at #4.

Our irrigation computer has a pump log that shows how often the pressure maintenance(PM) pump runs. The irrigation system loses pressure over time, so normally the PM pump will run for about 30 seconds every 2.5 hours or so. Last week we noticed that it was running about every 45 minutes, so we knew we had a leak somewhere. We ended up finding the leak that day when I happened to drive through it as I was moving the cart arrows on #4. It is nice to have that pump log though, because if not for that we may have only found the leak when the pipe completely broke and was blowing out of the ground (not ideal). The fix wasn't a big deal and Joe got it done pretty quickly. I wanted to mention it because it is directly in the road for cart traffic when you are exiting #4 fairway. We have it staked off, so please just avoid it for a few more days until we get the stakes removed; it is ground under repair for now.

Leak at #4. You can see a small stream at the lower end of the pipe, which is the top of the picture.

Finally, I found a cutworm today on #6 green. We sprayed for cutworms and don't have any visible damage from them so this little guy, like the Annual Bluegrass weevil I found at the driving range, just survived the spray or stumbled onto the course on accident. We will continue to keep an eye out for any cutworm damage, but I'm sure we are fine.

Good luck in the summer shootout!

Ian

Gas v. Grass

If you are wondering what happened on the right side of #14 fairway, it was an age old battle of gas versus grass. The battle is as lopsided as the Globetrotters/Generals rivalry; gas always wins. One of our guys wasn't being careful with his gas can and it tipped over in his cart and then he kept driving. Despite our best efforts to communicate the importance of not spilling gas, things like this seem to happen every year. We haven't yet had a chance to get the sod cutter out and address the issue, but we will get to that as soon as we can. It's really not that big of a job and we can have it done in a few hours. It is impressive how quickly the grass gets smoked by gas. The picture below is only two hours after it was spilled.

Ian