Weekly Course Update

Springtime is the time in golf course maintenance in which everything happens at once. last week at this time I was talking about rain and how it hurt or helped aeration along with cart path restrictions for the weekend. What a difference a week makes. The grass is growing faster then we can mow it, we are still finishing aeration, the to do list is growing faster then we can check off completed tasks and believe it or not we will be irrigating the entire course tonight. Typical spring. I have no complaints though, for I realize that not everyone gets to come to work at a place as beautiful as this.

Core aerating the surround of #9 green this morning. Of all the areas we
aerate the green surrounds are the most tedious and labor intensive
 in that they require the most hand work to process and remove the
extracted cores

Today we finished core aeration of the green surrounds that were remaining when it started to rain last week.  We started the aeration process this spring on Monday April 2nd and have completed greens, fairways and green surrounds in three weeks. And last week of course it rained and stalled progress. Next aeration event our goal is to complete these areas in two weeks, weather permitting. This would not have been possible if not for the alternating F9 / B9 closures. 

Putting surfaces have recovered nicely. We gave them a light topdressing of sand this week and the vast majority of  aeration holes are now covered. We will start using walking greens mowers on them tomorrow along with rolling through the weekend. Next week brushing and additional surface management along with growth regulator applications and we should be close to our desired speed of 11 feet or close to it. When we checked green speed this morning the surfaces rolled just under 10 feet. 

Close up of recovery progress on the greens
just this past Monday 4/16/12.

Close up of recovery progress 4 days later on Friday
4/20/12. 

For the next two weeks we plan on aerating rough. We will probably target a couple, three holes a day, alternate front and back nine starts to allow for aeration cores to dry. Look for daily course updated from the golf shop to keep you appraised of progress and where we are working. Additionally we are going to start topdressing fairways and approaches next week and I'll explain more about that next week. 

Jogi on core processor. This machine grinds up the cores
which are a mix of organic matter and native soil.
This machine will make short work of aerating
 the rough next week.