Start of a Decent Week

The week has started off in a very positive direction.  Weather has been outstanding the last few days sparking some turf growth but also allowing us to proceed with spring tasks.  Yesterday we were shortened staff as Moe, Jorge, and Cuco were all off taking their pesticides exam.  I'm very happy to say they all passed.  This is a test we are required to take every 3 years to give us the ability to handle chemicals that we put on the golf course.  Moe and Jorge have been taking the test for quite some time where as this was Cucos' first time. 
Despite their absence we've still pushed through with more cleanup duties.  Yesterday we focused on the Clubhouse lawn.  The clubhouse lawn gets a bit abused over the season as cars are sometimes parked there and carts are driven through.  With the hot summer of last year and the dry fall the trees in the lawn sucked up any available moisture for the turf resulting in poor turf.  In our effort to reclaim the front lawn we started with verticutting first to pull out any dead organic material and to open up the soil a bit.  Once we got the debris all cleaned up we seeded with a bluegrass/rye mix and then added some fertilizer.  We'll be sure to keep the seed moist and within hopefully two weeks we've got some good turf coming in.  Attached here are some photos of the work taking place:

We got involved in another drainage project yesterday as well.  When we mowed fairways on last Thursday I noticed a depression in the ground which, usually means a broken or damaged drain tile.  Thinking it was going to be a small fix we dug up the area where the depression was and this is what we exposed:

Again another steel tile like the one on 3 we just replaced.  This old pipe has literally rusted through and was unraveling in the ground. 





What we ended up doing was exposing the complete section of steel pipe, which happened to be all the way across the fairway.  It is only a matter of time that the rest of the pipe begins rust away so we are replacing the whole section today with a perforated plastic tile.  Perforations will help water seep into the tile from the fairway as well.



Other than these two projects we did some routine maintenance such as mowing tees, mowing fairways, and fertilizing the tees.  At the end of the day though I always enjoy going for a ride around the course to see some of the progress that we have made.  Here are a few end of the day photos:

Today we began our work on the bunkers and will be wrapping up the tile work on #10.  Once we get these two time consuming tasks finished will be able to get more into our routine with some small projects to tackle on the side.  All in all the golf course is shaping up.  Some spot covers will remain on the greens as we are getting some areas reclaimed that were damaged last year.  After pulling the covers yesterday though the areas are looking great!