Driving range, mowing, seed heads, pond at #9 and Mark's big win.

This week we had a company come in and pour the concrete base for the new artificial tee that will be at the back of the driving range. They were a pretty impressive outfit to see. They showed up Thursday and set the form and put down a base layer of gravel and today they poured the concrete. This will be a very nice addition to the practice area and should maximize use of the range regardless of the weather. Below are pictures of the form with the gravel base layer. Today, after they poured the concrete, they covered it with plastic to trap the heat and I wasn't able to get a picture of the finished product. I'll add one in the next post.

This week we also mowed greens and fairways for the first time of the year. Obviously, this means that the grass is coming out of dormancy and starting to grow. It also means that we're getting close to seed head control; in fact we sprayed greens on Wednesday to control poa and will spray fairways, tees and rough next week. The warm weather we've had so far means that we're about 3 weeks ahead of last year, which probably means you'll be golfing before you know it!

First mowing on greens and fairways. The lighter grass has been mowed.

Some seed heads showing up on greens. We sprayed early enough that we should get great control.

If you haven't seen it, the pond at #9 really looks great. We put topsoil on the hill by the parking lot this week and will seed that area early next week. It really is quite an improvement over the cattails and will be a great source of irrigation water for us.

Finally, Mark's lucky streak continued (he was a partial winner of the NOGCSA reverse raffle earlier this month) when he won Barrington a free bunker. Capillary Concrete is a company that does bunker linings similar to the Better Billy Bunker system we have used in all the other bunkers. Barrington will receive a 1200 square foot bunker lining installation for us to compare to the other bunkers we've done with the Billy Bunker system. It should be very interesting to see how they hold up against each other and it saves us some money on this project! Annika made Mark's day!

Happy Easter if you're celebrating this weekend.

Ian

Early warm up.

It seems the mild winter is giving way to a warmer than average March. Yesterday, we hit 70 degrees and a few of you were out on the course getting in some early rounds. While it's unusual to be this warm, it is allowing us to pick up where we left off at the end of last year; we are ahead of schedule and should continue that way so long as the warm, dry-ish weather continues. We've already started hiring people for this season and are anxious to wrap up the winter projects and get into the season.

For those of you who have played, I'm sure you noticed the pond left of #9 green had some work done to it. What we are trying to do here is give ourselves a bit of a water reservoir in case of a drought. We added some depth to the pond and installed a valve which will allow us to transfer water to the irrigation pond between #10 and #18. We are able to feed this pond (at #9) with wells located at the driving range so, if we ever do drain it, we will be able to refill it within a few days. Beyond the function, it will also be much more aesthetically pleasing, offering a better view of the course from the clubhouse.

Coming out of winter the course is in pretty good shape and considering how mild the winter was, this is no surprise. We had a little microdochium patch develop on two of the fairways but, outside of that, things look pretty good. Once the weather warms up a bit the grass will quickly outgrow the damage from this disease, just like it has in past years. Besides that, there is a fair amount of tree litter we need to pick up, but overall we are in good shape. I'm not sure if you guys would notice this, but there is less tree litter every year as we removed the unhealthy and dead trees that are dropping their dead limbs.

#14 Fairway

If this warm weather continues, and based on the forecast it will, we're going to be pretty busy pretty quick. As the course starts to break dormancy, so do the pests and weeds that we try to control with our plant health products. A lot of these weeds and insects show up after so many days of warm weather and a measurement has been developed called Growing Degree Days. Some of these pests have been found to show up after a certain number of GDD and MSU has a website that helps us track them. This GDD Tracker helps us time applications for insects, weeds and diseases that we are trying to control. It's a nice tool and one you can use too for anything you're trying to control in your home lawns. This is one of the tools we use along with traps to monitor annual bluegrass weevils, soil probes, moisture meters and daily scouting for any problems that may be developing. Spring is a busy time of year for us so, the more tools we have to help us time our applications for maximum efficacy the better.

Weevil Traps. Annual bluegrass weevils overwinter in leaf litter. This trap allows us to monitor population levels as they exit the woods and head toward the course. As populations peak, we spray to maximize effect of the application.

Ian