2015 All over again...

We all the spring season snow, it now is affecting the course in a whole different way.  Just like last year with all the rain we received in April and May (around 16.0") the course is flooding from the surrounding areas.  With over 60" of snow melt and course is again flooding.  The entire surrounding property, homes, roads and mountains all drain thru the course.  The pictures below will show some of the damaged areas.  At the moment, there are several areas on the course that we are unable to mow and correctly maintain.

My fingers are crossed that we do not experience the same runoff as last year.  Last year there were several areas that we could not mow for at least 3 months.  There is a lot of causual water on the course that we will mark as Grounds Under Repair.  Everyday new spots pop up and other spots may dry out.  Please be patient with the playing conditions in these areas.  I am not doing it to make you made and we are trying to be as reactive as possible to your request.  If someone can please do the sun dance for me, it would be greatly appreicated.

2016, Starting off pretty interesting!

As I sit here updating my blog on a early Wednesday morning due to frost, I opened up my camera to look back at the pictures I have taken over the past few months.  Let start around March 1st.  Since then, we have received over 60" of snow.  On several of the storms we received over 24" in one night.  Being Colorado, in between each storm it got warm to melt the snow causing rapid snow melt.  See picture below.

 

We decided to stick with the Aerificatin date of April 4th and 5th for the greens.  We received another storm the week prior to aerification.  By the time Monday came around most of the greens were cleared off but several of them had to be snow blown off so we could aerify safely with our equipment.  Since then we have received several snow storms and many chilly night.  Sad to say, but after 5 weeks of heal time, the green are only 80% healed in.  (If you could see me, I am trying to pull my hair out, but thankfully I buzz it close enough so I do not have a chance to grab it!)

I have been watching the soil temps daily praying that they come up.  Yesterday at 1 pm they were 45 degrees.  Because of all the cold wet weather, On May 5th, Pink Snow Mold decided to show its ugly head.  Even though 3 weeks prior I applied a fungicide to all the greens, we had the perfect condition for it to grow.  (Picture me trying to grabbing my hair again)

 

 

So, now the greens are not healed in, they are not putting smooth and now they have PSM.  Awesome! Finally this week, we saw a few seedling poping up on all the greens from when we seeded them on April 4th and 5th.  We interseeded all greens at 1#/M with T1 bentgrass.  You will notice that this week and for the next several we will be topdressing the greens more frequently to assist in the healing process and the smoothness.  Please be patient with us.  All the greens have the correct amount of nutrients, oxygen and our undivded love for recovery.  The only missing piece of the puzzle is the soil temperatures.  







 

 

Its been way to long since my last post...

I can not believe it has been over 8 months since my last post.  How the time flies!  Do not worry, I have taken pictures of all of our projects this past year and I will have them up shortly.  A lot of changes happened this year within our department and the course.  I have included a video of how the wind plays an important role not only in the summer but also in the winter.   This wind stripped the all the snow to the ground that had accumulated over the past 3 snow storms.  The most recent storm dropped 6 inches of fresh powder and then the next day the wind returned!

The snow and the snow drifts have played havoc so far trying to put the course to bed for the year.  We had to push back our Irrigation blow-out by 2 weeks because a recent storm dropped 12 inches.  We were unable to drive the large compressor to the pump house.  Golf course accessories are still buried under the snow.  With the upcoming warm weather and the no snow snow fore casted, it should only take us a few days to get caught back up. 

Keep an eye out for more post regarding our course projects this year.

Course Update

After a long winter, we were finally able to open up the golf course on Monday March 16th.  Since opening, we have been able to mow the fairways and tees only once at .625".   We have been able to mow greens 3 times with 2 of the cuts being with the brushes down. Currently the greens are being mowed at .140 and we will be lowering .05" every week leading up to aerification.  Greens aerification will be on Monday April 6th and Tuesday April 7th.  We will be aerifying with a 3/8" quad tine with a 2" spacing.  We were in the process today on fertilizing all the green until today's expected rain has turned into 4" of snow!

We have started our annual work on the repair and maintenance to each bunker.  Each bunker is inspected for correct depth of sand, an adequate lip around the edge and all weeds are pulled out from the edges.  We have started the in-house bunker renovation to the #4 green side bunker.  It was on my list from last year, but it had to be removed from the capital improvement list due to lack of money.  So far we have shelled out the old sand/dirt.  We will reshape the interior of the bunker before we add the drainage pipe and gravel. After the drainage is installed, we will add 5" of sand which will compact down to about 4".  We hope to have this back open in the next week for play.

We are all excited about the course this season and we hope to see you all out there!

 

The "What do you do during the winter" question...

No matter who I talk to about my job, this question always comes up in the conversation.  What do you do during the winter?  I wish I could say that I sleep in, take long coffee breaks or that I just go skiing.  But in reality, we work very hard in the off season to prepare ourselves for the upcoming season.  Preparation starts the season before when you are taking notes of projects that you want to accomplish, trees that you want to remove, bunkers that need added drainage or equipment that needs to be fixed.  We all takes notes and when the season is wrapping up, we all meet and discuss what we would like to accomplish in the off season.  We write it down on the dry erase board and start crossing tasks off as we complete them. No matter what, there are always a few up-keeps that we need to do every year.  This off season, we had an assortment of small tasks to accomplish instead of a few large projects.

In December, we painted another 1/3 of the shop's interior.  We reorganized the parts on the wall and threw away years of junk. Just another 1/3 left to finish the entire shop and we hoping that another large snow storm will allow for that this winter.

During a little warm spell that melted the snow, we removed all the equipment attachments so we could level the yard. We were able to put the all the bone yard equipment in the corner, which allowed for us to stage the equipment that we use more frequently.  No more moving equipment to get to equipment that we need to use.

We removed the existing PVC range poles from the Driving Range and we custom built our new poles.  No more broken or leaning poles in our range!  The new wood stain will be incorporated in all of our golf course accessories.

It is never ending.  We are always looking at different ways to improve our equipment.  This year, all of our greens mowers have brand new hydraulic hoses installed on them.  I hate hydraulic leaks!  Our sprayer is getting the royal treatment to make sure it starts the season with no leaks or problems.  As always we are going through each bunker rake to make sure they are not broken and we are repainting the tee box indicator stakes.  All the 22 ballwashers were sent off to the shop to get striped/sandblasted/primed and powder coated.

As all of these projects go on, we never forget about the course.  We are always monitoring the moisture in the soil and trying to make sure all the turf is covered in snow.  There are times you will catch us on the course snow blowing a snow drift while 20 feet away, we are watering the turf with our 500 gallon tank.

There is always something to improve on at a golf course!

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.