Overseeding & Irrigation

Driving Range Tee Overseeding

After a rainy beginning of the week we were able to overseed the driving range tee on Thursday 11/10/22 as planned. As I mentioned in the previous course update, we are a little late in getting seed down on this tee and it will take some time, likely several weeks, before we can use it again. If we opted not to overseed this tee, we would not be using it again until the Hybrid Bermuda came out of dormancy and filled in voids in the spring. This overseeding will give us the option of using the tee to some extent this winter, however until it is ready we will be on mats. 

We plan to transition out the cool season overseed in the  late spring / early summer months allowing the Hybrid Bermuda base to excel without competition all summer and fall.

GCM spreading seed on the prepared Driving Range tee on Thursday morning 11/10/22.

Sand topdressing on top of the seed

Dragging in the sand topdressing

Supplemental Irrigation Install Begins

I have mentioned on several occasions in our course updates recently about the crucial need for irrigation infrastructure that can irrigate our new Santa Anna Hybrid Bermuda Fairways independently of our new Tall Fescue Rough. We started this week on what will be the long process of this retrofitting our current irrigation system to accomplish this necessity. I'm going to write and talk allot about this process as we proceed, as it is critical to our success moving forward. Until then, a few pictures are worth a thousand words.

The first dirt to be moved in what will be a lengthy endeavor to retrofit our irrigation system with the ability to deliver the very different irrigation needs of our cool season Fescue and warm season Hybrid Bermuda as independently as possible. We started here on the bunker of #8 because it is one of the worst areas on the course where the Fescue adjacent to  the steep banks of the bunker faces orientated to the southwest really struggle in the summer. If we irrigated to meet the demands of the Fescue around the bunker, the Hybrid Bermuda around the area will get soft which is one of the main reasons we changed to Hybrid Bermuda, namely firm playing conditions and water savings. 

Its allot of work to add a dozen or so little pop-up sprinklers to an area, but it will be worth it. Above picture depicts the scale of this work well after layout and trenching. However by Friday you'll hardly be able to tell we were there. Prior to the 2021 renovation we did have small pop-up heads around the bunkers that were removed during construction of the new bunkers last summer. The nature and pace of the project dident allow for these small sprinkler's to be replaced at that time, although we knew we would have to at some point, so here we are. Again this is just the beginning of this retrofit.

 

After trenching and plumbing new irrigation lines it is important to compact the soil so there no settling under the sod. 

Above depicts a trench section that has already been compacted over the new plumbing, fine graded and ready for sod replacement

End result is is a pop-up sprinkler that will add supplemental irrigation to the steep cool season Fescue banks independent of the irrigation heads watering  the adjacent Hybrid Bermuda. The big "golf course" sprinklers that water the large scale areas will still apply  irrigation to these Fescue areas, but these new pop-ups will add extra water to an area that needs extra water. This allows us to reduce the time of  irrigation with the big heads keeping the Hybrid Bermuda drier, firmer and happier, and supplement  extra irrigation where it is needed on these steep cool season Fescue banks with these pop-ups.