Needing Rain in March?

Never thought I'd be happy to receive rain in March!  Normally this time of year we are waiting for it to stop raining, but again we are far from the norm as of late with weather.  Now I actually hope for a frost to slow down turf growth.  Things are growing vigorously right now and we are having a challenging time to keep up.  A few good frost could act as a natural growth regulator and help the crew out a bit. 

As I've said in previous post the warm weather has been welcomed and we've taken advantage of it.  The golf course is in very good shape for this time of year.  Just the balancing between cleanup and the mowing has been a challenge.  We keep prioritizing and knocking things off the list.  Cleanup of branches and other debris is very close to wrapping up and as soon as it's finished we'll be shifting our attention to the bunkers.  Happy to see that after just over an inch of rain no bunker is holding water!  With all of the clean up and mowing we have found time to take on a few projects as well as carry out some of our necessary pesticide applications.  This past week and early next week we'll be wrapping up our Dimension application in the rough.  Dimension is a preemergent weed control, primary for crabgrass but also has control on pesky weeds.  A theme that has developed and has carried true with this application is that we are applying roughly one month earlier than we had to apply last season. 

I look forward to getting cleanup tasks done and then getting this bunkers carried to the final touches.  Small drainage adjustments still remain on a few bunkers like 5, 8, 9, and 13.  These are all adjustments to the pipe that is outside the bunker and where it flows for proper drainage.  In all we should be done with all that work by mid to the end of April depending on weather.  I'll leave you with a few photos of some small projects we finished up this past week.

Drainage project we took on for 6 approach.  There was a settle low area in this approach that would stay wet and seed wasn't germinating.  We tracked drainage lines in the area to see how we could alleviate and found the bunker line ran right through here.  We dug that line up added some catch basins to catch water that runs off the green as well as from the fairway, added some pea gravel over the pipe and then back filled and sodded.  You can see the steps as the pictures progress.

Another angle of the area we were draining.  There were previous catch basins here but they were more to the left of the ones in the picture.  Problem was that they weren't in the lowest areas meaning they didn't relieve all the the water.

Antonio and Jorge prepping the areas to be sodded after it had been back filled, tamped, and leveled.

Beginning the sodding process

Project completed

Project completed and happy to say that after the 1" rain we just had the area is dry!

11 approach reseeding.  Last fall we used part of 11 approach as a nursery.  This area grew in very fast while other areas were lagging behind.  We decided to harvest some sod from here to touch up areas prior to winter, mostly collars around greens where turf was sparse.  This past week we brought in a sand/soil mix, releveled and reseeded the approach.

11 Approach after it had been fertilized, seeded, and raked

Nathan using our sand rake to "dimple" the seed in.  The tires on this machine are "knobby" tires and create a nice square dimple.  This is a great practice to do on newly seeded areas as these dimples hold water very well and keep the seed moist for germination.  We did see slight wash after this past rain but nothing major, we'll touchup a few spots and more than likely place a cover here on Monday to keep temperatures adequate for germination as our temps are supposed to be cooler than they've been.

That's a wrap for the week, we'll have more to come!  Hope you have enjoyed the warm weather.