The off season...

Things around here are finally coming to a still...
It took all week for us to plow the cart paths and chip ice while mother nature worked her magic with her warmth.  We reopened the golf course the day after Thanksgiving to happy crowd of 105 guests.  We remained opened for several weeks until our most recent snow storm.  The extended forecast has 2 more possible storm, one being on Christmas day!
While the days are slowing down, the maintenance team is hard at work installing the snow fence around the course, watering greens and tees and working on the routine winter equipment maintenance.  We have several project planned for the cold winter days both inside and out.  Here are a few pictures I have taken recently.

Hammilton posing for the camera

Snow fence on #2 fairway

Most recent storm!

Fall Aerification

We started Fall aerification in September.  We chose this time to skip tees and approaches to concentrate on the fairways.  We were able to complete all tees and approaches in the spring but had to cancel the fairways due to our tournament schedule.  All but 3 fairways were completed by the time we had to start our greens aerification.  The fairways were aerified with a 2.5" x 3" spacing, 4" deep with 3/4" hollow tines.  We interseeded all the fairways with Perennial Ryegrass.  This was the first time since I have been on property that we were able to aerify the entire fairway.  Most of the areas had over 1.5" of thatch build-up.  We will finish the remaining fairways in the spring and then start all over again!

On Monday and Tuesday, October 6th and 7th, we aerified all the 18 greens.  It had been 2 years since we deep tined the greens due to equipment failures.  Ryan Vrooman took control of the tractor and deep tine to make sure we were not going to have any problems.  We deep tined on a 6" x 3" spacing 8" deep with 3/4" solid tines.  We followed the Verti-Drain with our a walking John Deere aerifier.  The spacing was at 1.75" x 1.75" by 5" deep with 3/8" quad tines.  We lucked out with the weather this year as each day was in the high 60's. Normally going this late in the year is a crap-shot but mother nature was on our side, like she was all year. Within 2 weeks, all greens were completely healed in.  Having the open holes closed up before winter will help out fight our winter wind and decrease the amount of winter desiccation.