The End of the Season Preparations

In a few days we will have reached the end of October. After the 31st of October any days of golf in November are "extra" days. Once the 1st of November arrives we are typically able to keep the golf course open through the 1st weekend, after that, I like to say anything goes and once we see a change in weather conditions for the worse we have the ability to close the course as soon as required to place covers on the greens. Once that process is in place, that's it, we are officially closed for the year.

Next Monday, the 1st of November, we will be blowing out the irrigation system. We have around 1200 irrigation heads that need to be blown out and the entire process can take anywhere from 6-8 hours. Following the blowout of the system we will then be focusing on applying our final fungicide applications to the golf course. This application to greens, tees and fairways is to protect the plants from pink and gray snow mold. We typically want to make these applications as late in the season as possible and definitely after our final mowing of the season.

We also try to time the covering of our greens as late as we possibly can. We don't to cover the greens when the soil temperatures are too warm and the plants are still growing, we wouldn't want to encourage growth or fungi from growing under the cover. We also need a calm day to cover. As little as a 5 mph wind can create quite a stir and make the process of applying the covers quite difficult. Because of this, it can take us up to 3 days to cover 19 greens, if we have to stop and wait for another day when the weather cooperates.

Juvenile Balded Eagle Injured

I just came across this information when a volunteer from the Raptor Center posted a comment on my blog about the rescue of the juvenile bald eagle from a neighbors chimney. Apparently it was caught in the chimney and had broken it's leg in two locations and had some torn tendons. I have placed a call to the Raptor Center in St. Paul and am hoping to soon have an update on the condition of the bird. Once I have that update I will let you all know the status of the bird.

Collecting Moisture Readings on Greens

This summer we purchased a moisture sensor from Spectrum Technologies. The TDR 300. This mobile tool allows us to take moisture readings anywhere on the golf course. With the purchase of additional probes we are able to take readings at 1.5", 3.5" and 8". Currently we are taking readings on greens at 3.5".

As of this past week we implemented another job for the individual who changes the hole locations. It's during this time in the morning when we will take 9 readings on every green, every day. When turned on the tool resets itself and for each of the 9 reading it will also tell the accumulative average. So each morning we are able to have the average moisture reading of each individual green. We will use these numbers to base our irrigation practices after and it will provide us with the information to know what greens will require water first and how far we can push the greens before they reach a wilt point.

After working on the course for the past 14 years I did not need this tool to tell us what greens are our wettest and which ones are typically our driest. But now with the information we have we can do a better job of fine tuning each green and do a better job of matching moisture from green to green. We are also going to have a better idea of how far we can stretch irrigation cycles before we need to re-wet the profile.

Bunker Work at #3

Last week Nick worked on the left green side bunker on #7, this week he is repairing and adjusting the bunker edge on #3. With the original construction there was a small collection area in this bunker that left the golfer with a real difficult shot. We are adjusting the edge of the bunker, bringing it in slightly. Our hope is now if your ball is in the bunker the player can stand in the sand to take the shot and not have to be standing on the turf about 18 inches above the ball.

In the past 8 years a great deal of sand has been blasted onto the face of the bunker. You can see anywhere from 12-18 inched of sand has built up. We are not going to remove all of the sand. This would entail totally rebuilding the face of the bunker and I don't think we want to do that since the turf is very healthy.

And speaking of healthy, the roots of these plants are growing all the way through the sand. Who say's you need to have balanced soils to a healthy plant system?

The finished product.