Half Way There

We just passed the half way point of the summer, July 4th has come and gone.  Could not ask for a more ideal weather weekend for the holiday.  The holiday weekend may have been the best weekend of the spring/summer season yet.  Thankfully as of late, we've fallen out of the rainy pattern.  Yes, we've still had some showers here and there but nothing that is completely submerging the golf course.

The golf course has had a chance to dry out.  In fact, July 4th was the first time we used our irrigation system this season to actually water.  It had been used prior a few times but only to water in fertilizer.  It was nice to use for a change, gave us a chance to see our downfalls in coverage, and there were a few.  More issues were inoperable sprinkler heads, nothing major.  As the course has dried the play ability continues to improve.  Great to finally see some balls bounce in the fairway and get a nice 30 to 50 yard roll.  We've taken the opportunity with this weather to do some spot aerification/venting.  A few weeks back we ran our aerway machine through all fairways.  This is a process done to open up the subsurface and get fresh oxygen to the roots and aid in drying.  All the rain had roots suffocating a bit.  We've also been working on heavy traffic areas.  With wet soils and high traffic you get severe compaction.  Most of these areas are from tees to fairways and around the greens.  Solid tine aerification helps to loosen up the subsurface and again get oxygen to the roots.

We are just about through with a long stretch of events.  Over the last few weeks we've had Men's Guest day's, 4th of July weekend, JUF day, and next week Ladies Guest day.  Before our next round of events we are working on cleaning up some of our newly seeded fescue areas.  These areas, if you can remember were reseeded this spring.  Along with this process came the regeneration of some weedy grasses and weeds, as expected, and we are working at on eradication.  The fescue seed has germinated and has established lower to the ground.  We have recently entered the window to where herbicides can be used and won't harm the fescue grass.  Part of the cleanup process is mowing down the taller unwanted stuff first and cleaning up all debris.  Once this is done we will be applying roundup to these areas to start killing off unwanted plants.

The extended forecast looks ideal for some golf.  We look forward to seeing you all out and about on the golf course.  I'll leave you with some pleasant aerial photos from the drone.