Out with the Old and in with the New!

Well the fall has developed a theme, "Out with the old and in with the New".  With vote passing on Sunday evening the bunkers were the next area of the golf course to attack.  Everything we are doing is going to be fantastic, it is going to bring BCC to the 21st century in golf course conditioning. 

Our greens were just wrapped up with seeding this past Monday.  Some issues were experienced this past Saturday with the heavy rains but we're seeing that not much damage was created as seed is beginning to pop throughout all the greens.  Monday we began to see our first bits of green on number 5, only fitting as that was the first green and approach to be seeded.  I had anticipated it taking 5-7 days for germination to begin and we were right on the 5th day.  This morning during Nathan and I's drive we seen seed germinating on all greens except for 3, 4, 9 which were done this past Saturday and 18 which was seeded on Monday.  Most of these greens were the first to be seeded with one surprise on the first hole as it was the last to be seeded on Friday night.  I'm excited to see such a fast response from the seeding, but it has been great germination conditions except for some of the heavy rains.  I feel our procedures in preparing a seed bed and getting the seed down into the existing turf canopy has saved us from major washouts during these rain events.  Here are some photos of some grass germination:

Seedlings appearing on the back of 6 grn

More seedlings on 6 grn

First seedlings I seen on 5 grn

5 grn.  You can see the green hue

14 grn showing some good growth

Bunker project is now in full swing.  Over the last few days Ryan has been working on removing sand from the bunkers and starting to spread in our tall, native grass areas.  So far we've cleaned out the green side bunkers on 8, 7, 2, and now working on 5.  One thing that we have learned is that over the years lots of grass has crept into the bunkers so some heavy edging is needing done to reclaim out bunker square footage.  Ryan anticipates this to be about 8-10 week process, we'll help a bit to hopefully speed things along and be sure things are done correctly.  For the time being we will be working on the green side bunkers as the greens complexes are closed but also include some select fairway bunkers.  We'll hope that the fall weather cooperates and we can keep moving through smoothly without to many interuptions and down days. 

Ryan removing sand from the left green side bunker on 5

Left green side bunker on 2 all cleaned out

Notice the large lip of sand there.  This is what we are finding when we get the sand removed.  What has happened over the years is that the grass can slowly begin to creep into the sand and establish itself.  Edging is a process that should occur at least a few times a year to prevent this from happening. 

An illustration showing how much grass has actually crept into the bunker, reducing the square footage of the trap.

Front bunker face of the right green side trap on 8

Along with these projects taking place normal course maintenance is also going on.  This week we wanted to start reclaiming areas of turf that were lost from heavy rain and high heat.  We've gone out with our aerification equipment to get some holes poked and great a seed bed to seed into.  We will be using very similar steps as to what we did to prepare the greens for seed, minus the fumigation.  With the extended forecast and limited traffic I anticipate we'll have things showing recovery soon.  If we can get all areas reseeded by the end of this week we should see germination by the end of next week, giving us a full month to fill those areas with turf.

Jorge aerifying an area on 7 fwy while Alfredo cleans up the plugs

2 fwy's damaged areas aerified

Area of rough on 6 that has been aerified