Irrigation, bunkers, seeding, aeration
- matthewbehl
- Apr 8, 2022
- 2 min read
Each spring when we pressure up the irrigation system we are tasked with a great deal of irrigation repair. This is due to our saddles failing. Staff (mostly irrigation tech Marcelo Barrios) is working non stop on getting greens situated and pressured up. While most greens watering is done by hand, it is nice to have the heads operational at aeration time and also for watering in applications. Tees will be worked on next as they tend to dry out very quick due to their sandy composition. Due to the large volume of repairs we will be contracting out two days of work as well. Work is currently planned for April 14th and 15th, but can change due to contractors schedule. There will be very little course disruption when the irrigation work is taking place.
17 tons of bunker sand was added to the front nine bunkers this week. Approximately, the same amount of sand will be added to the back nine bunkers in the upcoming weeks. Sand may be a little softer then usual until the compaction process is complete. Sand was also added to the short game bunkers.
A couple of very small areas on the first, ninth, and seventeenth fairway where we had winter damage were seeded this week. Most of you probably didn't even notice these areas as you played your first rounds, but we used it as an opportunity to incorporate more bentgrass.
Pictures below show the process of seeding a bigger area of the first fairway where we have a high concentration of poa annua. This areas was aerifed, seeded with bentgrass, dragged with a chain drag mat, topdressed with a 60/30/10 soil, sand, peat mix. Then seeded again with bentgrass and dragged.
Greens will be aerated on Monday, April 11th and Tuesday, April 12th. The course will be closed on the 12th. We will be using a 1/4 inch coring tine with two rows of tines equally 60 tines in total. We will be doing this on a 1.5 inch spacing and pulling as much material as possible. Once the greens surface is cleaned we will be adding a variety of soil amendments, topdressing with sand, and brushing the sand. With this aeration method greens should heal relatively fast. Our goal is to pull as much material as possible, but also be healed by the time we see poa annua seed head on fairways. Open aeration holes around the time poa annua goes to seed can contribute to poa annua contamination. Greens will also be seeded with pure distinction bentgrass which is the offspring of A1 and A4 bentgrass which is the makeup of our greens. This allows us to add another variety, but hold onto the uniform color.
Lastly, Pansies will be planted at the clubhouse this week to complement our bulb plantings.
