Feeling grateful!

Without exception, we have all heard the many adjectives used to describe 2020--some of which aren't fit to print.  As with everything else in 2020, when trying to maintain the golf course, we often had to quickly change and adapt to whatever was thrown at us.  

Credit for any success we had this year belongs to the team that continued to work through these uncertain times.  Their positive attitude, and "get it done" mentality never wavered, and provided stability we all could use.  So, as we prepare to close the books on 2020, we say thank you to these hardworking individuals!  

Finally feeling like winter

 After a virtually snowless winter last year, it was nice to see the course covered in a coating of white this past week.   With close to 300 rounds the prior weekend--a crazy number for mid-December--the course is ready for a break from the action.  

In addition to the Clubhouse, the Grounds team clears snow from the several sidewalks where golf course property adjoins the street.  This includes the areas behind #10 green, #1 green, #8 green, #7 green, #5 tee, and #14 green.

Our snow blower typically makes this an effortless process, however the temperature fluctuations during the storm led to a layer of ice forming, which created some challenging conditions when it was time to do our clean up. For the most part, the snow blower was just gliding across the top of it, so a good bit of handwork was required to chip the ice away.

The snow also had some of the woodland creatures looking for shelter.  One cute youngster was spotted seeking refuge in the shrubs behind the Clubhouse.

Of course it could just be that we got some extremely realistic Holiday decorations this year...

Solid Tining Fairways

 We are continuing to make holes this fall, now using solid tines on the fairways.  This practice provides several benefits.  The heavy duty machine has a slight "kick" to it, which purposefully causes some heaving of the ground as the tine enters and exits.  This fracturing of the soil increases pore space and decreases compaction caused by traffic, thereby allowing for better water infiltration, more oxygen in the root zone, and ultimately, improved rooting.

We follow up the solid tining with a roller to smooth the surface.  The aerifier we acquired this year is able to go deeper than our previous machine, and it heaved-up a surprisingly large rock on #4 fairway this past week.  

When you discover something like this, a few thoughts come to mind:

• You never know what you'll hit when you stick a shovel in the ground.
• A plant's appearance is typically dictated by what is happening below ground--however there may be minor exceptions to this rule.
• Maybe we really could grow grass on a sidewalk...

Coring Collars

 For the past few years, we've been trying to increase the frequency of collar aerification beyond the two times per year when the greens are aerified.  Collars tend to accumulate sand both from topdressing as well as from bunkers.  This can lead to "sand dams" or "collar dams" where water is no longer able to freely surface drain off the green.

We start by making a single pass with our aerifier:

The next step is to use one of our core harvesters to collect the plugs:

This is then followed by blowing off any remaining debris:

Lastly, we roll the collar:

Unlike when we aerify the greens, we are not filling the holes with sand, instead leaving them open.  Again, one of the goals of this process is to actually lower the collar a tad, so removing material and then rolling helps to accomplish this. We decided to do this process on Thursday and Friday based on the weekend forecast.  While rain isn't great for golf, it does a nice job of washing off any sand.