Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Profile

Tons (literally of sand) of hard work has gone into creating this perfect greens profile found here on the Heritage course.  Many Many years of consistent applications of sand topdressing formed this sand dominate cap on top of the native push-up greens constructed by William Langford in 1926.  
Playing Conditions continue to flourish and get better every year with our long term management strategies and goals. We continue to 'stay the course' and let nothing compromise our turfgrass cultural control program.  

Roots

The health of our greens starts below the surface.  Cutting cups is difficult on the Heritage because our roots are well beyond the 7" depth.  You almost feel guilty tearing a plug out to place a new hole location.  
The new HiO cup cutter has been a wonderful investment, edges are cleaner and the depths are proper.  Our backs and knees also appreciate the new tool.  

Monday, July 21, 2014

Rock

88 years later and we still find rocks like this hiding under the green surface on the Heritage course.  You can say with confidence that this would be a new pin position.  

Topdressing

Today was another scheduled maintenance day on the Greywalls course.  We core aerified the clean-up pass on numbers 1, 7 & 14 greens to help us battle a fungus named Fairy Ring.  Completed next was a vertical mowing of every putting green and followed with a clean-up blow and a mowing using our reels with groomers.  Next we sand topdressed the greens and we dragged the sand into the canopy using our coco fiber drag mat.  Re-cutting the cup and cleaning the surface with our brush reels completed our days work in the field.  
Tomorrow we will continue the cleanup process by mowing the putting green surfaces with a heavy duty 7 blade reel set before we switch to our 11 blade sand reel set for another 3-4 days.  Following this week of sand reel mowing we will return to using our 15-blade primary greens reels.  








Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Yes It is this good, come out and enjoy MGC today!
One of the occupational hazards of the job.  While trimming drain covers a staff member came across this nice wasp nest.
The last two maintenance days have been fantastic for topdressing greens.  A dry day allows us to incorporate the sand into the canopy; which is where we want it.
We lost a few large Maple trees on the Heritage course this week.  Both were growing in a wooded area but both fell onto the course so they had to be address asap.  

 This large tree was blown over by the wind and completely blocked the path going to #14.
This ancient beast was drilled with lightning and fell onto the course between number 15/17.  This is a perfect example of why hiding under a tree during a storm is never a good idea.  
We have a John Deere Gator on loan to us as a demo.  I am really impressed with the improvements JD has made on this unit, the ride is smooth and the power is wonderful.
My two youngest really like it also! :)
We have two young bucks with a very large antler base chumming around together on the Heritage course.  Keep an eye out for them while golfing plus keep a keen eye out for the Doe with her little guy.
Irrigation of the Greywalls tee boxes is always an issue.  The smaller heads do not hold adjustment as well as the larger ones and zones stick on nightly wasting our time and causing us issues in the morning.  The pure sand based root zone is great for drainage; so good in-fact that it has very little soil moisture retention capability and causes us serious issues of LDS and drought stress if a zone or head malfunctions.  
This head completely blew apart from the top and caused a very dry 1/3 of a tee box before it was discovered.
We have been utilizing the DR brush mower to clean up a few thick native areas that potentially slow pace of play.  This is a great machine and it will make make many happy customers for years to come!  :)

Some more fine examples of the beautiful wild flowers found on the MGC property






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