Greywalls update

Snow piles and drifts remain on the Greywalls course in the bunkers, along rocks and north facing slopes.  I shoveled off the remaining snow on those putting surfaces last Thursday to allow the frost to finally melt from the soil.  

 

Number 9 Greywalls

 

Number 6 Greywalls

60 degree temperatures with rain this weekend will help melt off these snow piles but 38 with rain/snow mix to start the week will slow things down again.  

 

Friday afternoon we blew off the last remaining greens and we rolled them for the first time.  Rolling is a critical step in spring prep on the Greywalls greens.  A combination of our pre-winter solid tine aerification and winter frost loosens the sand surfaces and they must be rolled 3-4 times before we can start mowing them for the season.   

Our practice putting green has the highest % of poa growing on it.  It was transplanted here from golf shoes and then has started its spread around the course as it seeds.  The discoloration on the poa is from late season paclo applications; this plant growth regulator is now used on greens, fairway, approaches and tees to slow down the spread of poa on our bentgrass greens and our fine fescue/ bluegrass fairways.  

After we finalize cleanup on the Heritage course and get it open for the season my focus will move more towards the Greywalls course.  

The next few weeks as the snow/frost melt and the ground drains and firms we will be getting the Greywalls course cleaned up.  We will also perform some maintenance tasks that can not be accomplished when we are open for play.  

We are faced with a major cleanup on Greywalls due to the wind storm a month ago.  20 plus trees came down and many others had to be removed due to wind damage and hanging branches.  Two weeks of cutting and we now have the trees cut up; the hauling of lumber and chipping branches remain.  

Tree cleanup by number 2 green 

 

The view of 2 green after tree cleanup.  

We have a May 1st target date for opening the Greywalls course.  

Heritage course opener

The Driving Range and the putting greens are officially opening today on the Heritage course 4/8/2017.  A quick turn around in one week especially considering the temperature was not high.  Full sun melted or softened the snow enough for us to shovel off and prepare the turf.  

 

When will the Heritage course open?

15 Red tee still has snow on it, the right side of 15 is still snow covered, 13 green just melted off 3 days ago but snow remains behind it with ground frost making cart traffic impossible plus 7 green still has a snow drift on its right side.  The 60 degree temperatures this weekend should melt it off enough allowing the remaining ground frost to melt out of the soil.  The ground will then drain and have an opportunity to firm up enough to tolerate traffic.  

Signs, ropes and traffic directional stakes will go out this week and the Heritage will be open by next weekend.  

After I shoveled the rest of the Heritage greens off on Thursday the sun melted the frost layer out.  We were then able to run the brush reels on the greens to clean off excess sand.  We followed that with a mow using our sacrificial sand reels at the higher than normal height of cut.  This process really cleans up the putting surfaces and stimulates spring growth when temperatures warm.  

 

 

We also mowed the approaches and tees on Friday, just skipping the surfaces still under snow.