Summers end!

These two grinders are what keep our reels sharp all season  long.  They were purchased by the golf course at the beginning of this year.  Before the reels were done on a much older grinder.  We are now cutting grass below a 1/8^th of an inch, so the reels have to be perfect.  These grinders are a crucial tool in keeping the greens at their best.

Reel Grinder



Bedknife Grinder



With the end of the summer and the start of another school year the student staff will be missed here in the maintenance department, as well in the other departments of the golf course. 

Our student staff was remarkable this year, we hired 7 students to help us through the season and 6 were outstanding.  One was lost to another job.  One student returned for a week to help us out before he started school.     

We wish these fine young men a great and safe school year: Nick, Mark, Luke, Brandon, and Cameron.

Corey and Tyson will be sticking around to help out as they go to school locally.

So if you have done the math correctly this means we have 5 cutters including my self left to take care of the property.  Wish us luck it will be a long September!

 Cheers!

Kendall

Club Championship and More!

 

A lot has happened since my last update.  Several different tournaments have been held at the golf course along with all the Club Championships.    

The turf has been recovering nicely from the heat stress of the summer.  There was times this summer where it seemed like it would never end.   It was just day after day of continuous heat and it wasn’t just the days it was the nights as well. The greens came through the heat really well. I was very happy and proud of their performance under that much stress.  We never raised the height of cut during the stressful times, we just backed off on the double cuts and even let them rest for a day here and there.  Last season we purchased a walk mower to cut the putting green and #14 green as well.   It did wonders for those two greens.  This year whenever a green was starting to show stress it was added to the walk mow route.  This seemed to do the trick, so from mid June until mid August many different greens were cut with the walker. 

By far the tees took the heat the worse.  The weakness of the tees was evident early in the summer and unfortunately some grass was lost on them.  The irrigation system is poorly designed for the tees.  Basically the pipes dead end on the tees instead of being looped, along with this they stopped one sprinkler head short on every tee.  This means that the ends of the tees are not getting the proper coverage and the reds and blue tees were susceptible to the heat.  With the cooler weather approaching we took advantage of the fore casted rains that were coming and we aerated all the tees except the white ones.  We left these because they still needed to be played for men’s club championship.  As the senior men and ladies club championship were finishing, the crew went out right behind and began aerating the tees.  The process was Aerate, verticut the cores, the cut cores were pushed around to fill the holes with loose dirt, blow them off real quick and then they were seeded with bent grass. 

Aerated



Verti Cut



This was very good timing indeed.  After the aeration of the tees the rains came.  From Thursday Aug 9^th till Tuesday Aug 14^th a little over 5” of rain fell on the golf course. That is 23 744 258 litres on the entire property.  The grass has absolutely exploded, with this growth the mowers are working harder and more and more issues are appearing with the ageing fleet.  Some days it seems we are in the shop more than on the course. 

After the heavy rains a tree was up rooted below the clubhouse near the cart exit on #18.  Only half the tree fell down but the other half would have been too dangerous to leave.

It is very disappointing to me when it was such a stressful year for the turf to survive, but we still have members that continue to disobey the cart rules.   

This Tuesday the 21^st we will be verti cutting the greens followed by a top dress of sand and then brushing it in.  The greens will be fertilized and watered the following day.  This process helps to control the thatch on the greens which helps with the firmness of the greens and ball roll.  The greens have not been verti cut since June 4^th.   The last time that the greens were top dressed was July 25^th after we vented them.  The greens will be verti cut one last time for the season in the third week of September to help prepare them for the Bring your Best Tournament.    

Thanks For Reading
Cheers Kendall