Green's update

It's been a couple weeks since the perimeters of the putting surfaces were redone and I'm happy to say the new grass is coming in nicely. 

It's been raining like crazy here so that's been helping a lot with the grass growth. 

The course is in great shape considering what I did to it last month. It's amazing how fast the Celebration recovers. 

Tee expansion project work continues on 6 & 12. This morning we are removing all the rocks and steps on 12 to prepare for hauling in more dirt to widen the tee. 

The tee will be widened to the West all the way to the edge of the cart path and cut to be all the same level. This will give tremendous variability for spreading divot wear. 

5 green / 6 tee.... fill dirt is being hauled in for the raised cart path by 5 green. 

We are doing two things by raising the cart path by 5 green. First, the intention is to make it harder for a rolling ball to go left across the path and into the landscaping. Secondly, we are sculpting the ground to channel surface water to the existing drain basin so we do not have to modify it as well. There are a lot of things to consider for even a small project like this one. 

Also be sure to check out the clubhouse renovation blog as well. The clubhouse is looking good and moving along nicely. The goal is to try and have the roof sheeted and dried in by the end of week. That would be a huge milestone. 

Summer projects

Lots to do this summer with some aggressive projects planned. 

Here the staff is ripping out what's left of the 50 years worth of asphalt by 5 tees. This area of asphalt was not removed in the renovation of 2009 to save money and has always not blended in the way it should. It will have a new aggregate cart path installed and shaped to perfectly fit the area. 

Once the material is loaded it is then brought to 6 white tee area to be used as a base filler for the tee expansion project. The tee is being expended northward to the Mooring's Park fence line, but in order to do that the littoral needs to be filled in. To save money, the littoral is being 80% filled with the old as asphalt and then capped with clean dirt. This process allows us to environmentally get rid of the asphalt by burying above the water table. 

Once there's enough material piled up, Trevor pushes the material into the depression with the blade on the mini excavator. 

Along with the tee project on 6, the maintenance staff is moving the cart path on 5 green away from the bottom of the green's slope. This is being done to help any shots that might go left of the green from rolling across the cart path into the landscaping, having a chance to stop on the grass for a decent recovery shot. 

In the next picture instead of the cart path veering off to the right and riding the bottom edge of the green's slope, it will be to the left along the edge of the tree line and turn at the back of #6 blue tee. 

This is a very poor picture of the newly reclaimed putting surface areas, but believe it or not there's lots of greenery popping up. The program of using the old Aerification plugs seems to be working well. Trevor and Kenny are nurturing the baby plants along with kid gloves.  

Here Trevor is removing some palm trees in anticipation of BIG, LONG trucks making their way out to the comfort station on 6 for it's reconstruction process. I am removing the trees so that the heavy trucks do not have to make a 27 point turn on the paver brick cart parking area in front of the golf trailer which will destroy it. The trees will be saved and put into a nursery area for holding. Once the comfort station reconstruction is completed the trees will be replanted in the same place.

 

100 Day War Begins

It's aerification week and we all know that means... there's gonna be a lot of holes, a lot of ripping, a lot of tearing and long days. This time around however, it started out very wet. The weather as it was didn't seem to affect us to greatly in the beginning of the week, but in the end it really put us back about two days. 

As always we began with a whole lot of vertical mowing trying to eliminate the thatch build up and the grain accumulation from the previous growing season, followed by aerification and sanding. This time around however was also the beginning of our putting surface reclamation project. 

As everybody knows the putting surfaces that had been encroached by the celebration Bermuda grass was killed in an effort to prepare for this process. This week my staff was able to successfully reclaim the edges of the putting surfaces on holes one through nine. The weather delayed us such that we were not able to get to the back nine. We will complete the back nine reclamation process in July when we close down to aerify again.

The dead encroachment area being cut for removal. 

Trench view of the area being reclaimed. Only the dead grass and underlying thatch was removed. 

Then the greens were aerified to produce the needed new grass plugs for the trenches. 

The millions of small cores were pushed into the perimeter trenches to "plant" the new grass. 

Before being planted in their new homes, the plugs were spread and leveled out

Once the plugs were leveled they were compacted and watered. Let the grow-in begin. 

The perimeter areas were purposefully left a little low so the mowers would not scalp off the freshly planted areas. 

The plan will be to continually add supplemental sand to the perimeters of the putting surfaces, thus raising the level up to a point where it is all on the same plain. 

Holes 10-18 will have the putting surfaces reclamation process start in July when we close. Due to the weather delay, I decided to do a phased approach for this project. I didn't want to take a chance and try and complete the holes 1-18 and be unsuccessful before having to reopen for play. 

Random pics from this week...

Mowing in a cloud of dust scalping down the fairways. Scalping helps remove grain, or the tendency of the grass to grow in a particular direction. All of the grain causes the swirly look. 

The aftermath, not much greenery left around the tees and approaches. 

The mound of material removed from aerifying the greens, minus all the material that was reused. 

1/6 of the pile left from verti-cutting the fairways. At remedies amount of thatch is removed from verti-cutting. This helps with grain and sponginess. 

Lunch for the guys one day I made. Each one is 5 lbs of pork sausage rolled with rub, onions, peppers and lots of cheese. Then wrapped in 1.5 lbs of bacon, topped with BBQ sauce and slow smoked for 4-5 hrs. It's called a Bacon Bomb! I made 4 of these and they didn't last long.  I always cook for the guys when we are closed for the week for aerification. 

Long week but we're almost there. Lots to do and a short time to make it all happen. 

Leveling the playing field

Over the years as the greens are top dressed, it is inevitable that the collars begin to get what is called the "sand dam."  This is caused from the process of dragging in the sand after a sand top dressing of the putting surface. The collars have a longer leaf blade than the putting surface and therefore grab and hold more sand as the brush that is used to drag the sand is turned on the collars. Notice in this picture how the ends of the level are not touching the turf, this "bump" in the middle of the level is called the sand dam. 

Since we are redoing the perimeter of the collars I thought it would be a good time to go in and rectify the problem of the sand damn. The traditional method of eliminating the sand dam is sod cutting off the turf, leveling the sub grade by hand, and then putting back the turf. This is a very labor-intensive and long, arduous process. 

In recent years a new method has been devised in order to be able to eliminate the sand dam in one easy process without having to remove the turf to get to the subgrade. Essentially what is done is use a machine that has a very wide swath that cuts on a level plane perpendicular to the bump in order to flatten out any bumps along the way. The machine has hundreds of super fast rotating flat knives that act like little scoops, only remove what is sticking up too high. 

The end result is what looks like a divot, just five feet wide. You can see in the picture the green grass that is left within the machine's swath. These areas are areas that are little bit low and therefore did not have anything removed.   The picture is of a test pass that was done on the putting green by 1 tee. The white lines are the edge of the putting surface we are going to reclaim. 

So we all know that next week is aerification week, or the start of the 100 Day War as I like to call it, and that means the Club is closed. It would seem this time however, Mother Nature isn't going to play nice with us. On Monday and Tuesday of next week it is supposed to rain due to a tropical disturbance that is going to be moving up from the Mexican peninsula.  The weather disturbance is forecasted to intensify quickly and possibly become a tropical storm by Tuesday. 

Well what does all this have to do with leveling out the sand dams around the edges of the greens you ask? Simple....I have borrowed the machine that does the leveling process and need to get it back to the Club that loaned it to me. So, because of all of the weather that is forecasted we are going to go ahead and level the collars over the weekend instead of on Monday morning. The leveling machine is scheduled to go back on Tuesday and returning it can't be delayed. 

For those playing this weekend you will notice that some of the colors appear to be scalped out a little bit more beyond the edges of the dead green's  perimeters. It will have no effect on play and will be only a visual disturbance. Moving up the sand dam removal process a few days is a necessary evil to ensure that we maintain our schedule for achieving all of our economic goals for the summer.