Tree trimming

There are more than a few Oak trees out on the property that need to be trimmed up.  They needed to be pruned for a while, but Oak trees should not be pruned during the summer to prevent Oak Wilt disease.  Now is the time of year when we can start pruning again. 

We started trimming the Oak trees along the locker room entrance and the driving range last week.  We will finish these trees along with a few other key trees around the course this week.  This winter we hope to go through the entire property and trim up most of the trees as needed.

Green banks

Today we sprayed the rough (banks) around the greens on holes #1 and #17.  The chemical we sprayed is a herbicide that will eventually kill the bentgrass in the rough.  After a few days the bentgrass will turn white and will weaken.  We will spray this herbicide again in two weeks and four weeks from now.  The bentgrass will die after the third application.  Any thin areas that result from the bentgrass dying will be seeded into bluegrass.  This will provide for better lies and improved aesthetics around the greens.  If this process works, we will continue it on more greens next year.

Ash trees

Dying Ash tree in front of #7 tee.  One of the many Ash trees that will be removed.

Today, we took an inventory on the Ash trees that will need to be removed this winter.  We counted 21 Ash that are dead or significantly declined.  We will be removing these trees this winter.

Every spring we treat a portion of the Ash trees with an insecticide that helps slow the decline of the Ash.  It seems even though we treat the trees, they eventually die off.  The question has been raised if we could save money by not treating them since they are going to die anyway.  The answer on this is we could, but we probably won't be able to afford the removal cost if every Ash on the property died this year.  Therefore we must treat some of the Ash trees to slow the decline and take an extended removal approach.

This winter, our horticulturist Tim Stumpp and myself will be reviewing the entire property and determine where a significant number of trees will be lost in the coming years.  We will then construct a tree planting plan that will be implemented as the Ash trees die off.

Rain

We received almost 2 inches of rain in the past 24 hours.  This morning we are squeeging greens and fairways as well as fixing bunkers.  Tomorrow we will be picking up all the branches that came down with the wind.

Range tee was full of puddles

We were squeeging greens before the sun came up

Once the greens were done, we focused on getting water of the fairways

#14 fairway

Greens

While we were not able to aerify all the greens on August 27, we did aerify #12 green and the practice putting green.  As of today, 90% of the holes on these greens are completely grown over.  This is one of the reasons to aerify greens during this time of year.  The greens are back in good condition in 10-14 days.  In preparation for the August aerification we fertilized the greens and took out the growth regulator that is used to slow down the greens growth.  This is why you are seeing "greener" greens and slower speeds.  This will wear off next week and bring the greens back to normal.

I have also heard the comment on the greens being soft and why we are watering the greens.  We have not put irrigation on the greens since we aerified.  We received an inch of rain that day and we have had more rain since then.  These greens stay wet for an extended period of time after a rain, that is why they are soft.  It is not from irrigation.  We are trying to manage our organic matter content in the greens and incorporate more sand into the profile.  This will firm up the greens after rains.  We have fallen behind in this matter over the years and we need to catch up.  This is the reason why we are aerifying greens 3 times a year.  In order to maintain the greens according to member expectations we need to aerify.  In the long run it will pay off with firmer and faster greens during the year.

Seeding the range tee

As usual, the driving range has been getting a lot of use.  This use is quite evident on the range tee.  We re-seeded the range tee on Tuesday in hopes of filling in all of the heavily used areas on the tee. 

Growing grass from seed is always a challenge on the range tee.  This is because so many people use it that we can't keep the seeds moist enough to grow.  Typically we would need to run the sprinklers a couple times a day to keep the seeds moist and this isn't always possible.  This time of year brings cooler temperatures and more rain.  This will give us a much better chance of the seeds germinating and surviving.

Aerification cleanup

Last Monday we were able to aerify the fairways.  It also rained on Monday which made it a little challenging to cleanup.  We spent most of last week cleaning off the fairways.

It was a dusty process



We also attempted to aerify the greens last Monday.  With the amount of rain that we got, it wasn't possible.  Our next scheduled greens aerification will be on October 29th.  We will be double aerifying the greens then to catch up.