Heavy storms hit again Monday night dropping 1.35" of rain and washing out all the bunkers. Fortunately, there wasn't any hail and only minor debris to clean up. It seems like that's the pattern we're stuck in and for every few nice days we get hammered with severe storms. Not counting the rain this afternoon, we've received 2.8" of rain so far in June. Our monthly average is 4.15" and we're not halfway thru the month yet. Going back to May 1st, we've received 11.25" of rain over 43 days, which is almost one third of our total yearly precipitation. We're making the best of it and trying to schedule maintenance activities based on the forecast. For instance, on Monday we verticut, mowed, and topdressed Grove greens again because we still saw some depressions from the hail damage two weeks ago. The forecast called for rain Monday night, which worked out perfectly to wash the sand in. On Monday we also core aerified, topdressed, seeded, and dragged the back driving range tee on the Orchard side to speed up divot recovery. One of our goals this year was to improve the condition of the tees given their age and increased usage. Other activities this week include spraying tees and greens, fertilizing tees, repairing an irrigation leak on Grove 6 fairway, trimming around and cleaning off irrigation heads, drains, valve boxes, and yardage markers in fairways/rough, and refurbishing the steps to the silver tee on Lakes 2.
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| This is how much material was removed after verticutting the practice green on Monday. Topdressing sand will settle into the turf canopy and fill in where this organic material used to be. |
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| Here's the practice green after topdressing on Monday. It appears heavier than it really is, and one time around with the drag brush is all that is required to move the sand off the putting surface. |
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| Core aerifying the back driving range tee on the Orchard side to relieve compaction and allow for better infiltration of water and nutrients. |
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| Here's the range tee with a heavy topdressing over the aerification plugs. After topdressing we spread a generous amount of seed to help with divot recovery and to fill in thin areas. |
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| Here's the tee after dragging to break up the aerification plugs and work the topdressing sand and seed into the aerification holes and low spots. The material remaining on the surface is thatch from the aerification plugs that will be blown off. We expect to see germination in 5-7 days and this tee should be fully recovered in 3-4 weeks. |
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| Another one of our projects this week was replacing a ductile iron tee on a 4" irrigation mainline. Of course the leak was right in the middle of the fairway and about 2.5 feet deep, so we needed a large hole to work in. The smaller pipe coming out of the tee is a 2" lateral line that supplies water to the irrigation heads in the rough above the fairway bunkers. The green hose is the suction line for a trash pump to remove the water coming into the hole. |
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| This is the underside of the 4" tee that was leaking. Like most things in the ground for over 20 years, the casing of the tee was deteriorating and the rubber gasket started to push out of the tee from the pressure of the irrigation system. These types of repairs are becoming more common given the age of our irrigation system. |
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| David Farr is removing the old rubber mats from the steps on Lakes 2 that were falling apart and created a safety hazard. The steps were then sprayed with an anti-microbial cleaning agent and power washed to remove the grime that had accumulated over the years. New rubber mats have been ordered and will be installed as soon as possible to make the steps much safer. |
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