Granite Bay Wildlife

One of the cool things about Granite Bay Golf Club is sheer volume of wildlife that inhabits the property and shares it with all of us who work and play here.  Great example are the   Great White Egret's that are commonplace around our naturalized lakes. These picture's were taken in the morning of a Egret that hangs out on a clump of bull rushes on a regular basis near #1 green.  

I don't know if it was the same Egret but I and a group of ladies observed him or her with a huge gopher in its beak walking across the #3 tee last Tuesday 6/2/15. We need to put him on the payroll. 

Monday Spiking

A typical task for your GCM department on Mondays is spiking the greens. Spiking allows necessary air to penetrate the root zone helping with surface drainage and rooting.  

The holes produced by the spiking are >1/4" and do  not effect putting quality especially after rolling. 

We typically incorporate vertical mowing into the process as well. Vertical mowing thins out some leaf blades at the surface helping with smoothness. 

The finishing touch to the process is a light top dressing, almost dusting of sand. This sand incorporates into both the vertical mowing lines and spiking holes to aid in additional smoothness. 

Multiple variations of this process are practiced every week ahead of Monday events. Sometimes we will skip the spiking, sometimes the verticle mowing. Sometimes we inter seed bent grass seed into the process (more about this process in a subsequent post). We typically apply a light dusting of sand every Monday helping to keep the surface smooth and dry even if we skip some of the other processes.