What a week I think this is the first time all week that I am actually sitting down at my desk.
We sprayed all the fairways this week for snow mold and only have the greens and tees to finish up. I will then lightly topdress the greens to help protect the crown of the plant from the winter winds. The mild weather has been prefect for growing roots. the grounds temperature is quite cold which has pretty much slowed any top growth but still mild enough for great rooting. You can just about make out the solid tine holes here and in these channels nice white healthy roots. A prefect example of the benefit of solid tine cultural practices. Our timing was right on the money with the weather. Also, looking closely at the photo you will notice that we have very minimal organic matter in our greens. This is a testament to our topdressing and verticutting practices that we have done since the greens were only 5 weeks old. We have only core aerated the greens one time in 12 years and have no plans any time soon. This is why our greens are so smooth and firm throughout the season and even now the greens are putting true in November.
I wanted to complete another project this week since we had a couple damp cold days Monday and Tuesday I have been looking at the bunkers behind 8 green and have always wondered as to why there was a 12 inch section of rough between the bunker and approach. Something just did look right. These bunker were also very deep and needed a little adjustment. We removed the rough section smoothed the transition, added approach to the edge of the bunker and raised the bunker to make it much more playable if you were to end up in the bunker. As you can see in the photos these bunkers are much more ascetically appealing and blend into the contours much better then before.
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| before left bunker |
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| after left bunker |
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| before right bunker |
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| after right bunker |
We also added a drop tee to hole 16, this year we have been painting a drop zone in the rough. which was working but the area was for the must part flat and was not going to be too much work to just add a proper drop tee there.
Next week looks to be yet another week of decent weather and we will keep moving forward on some small detail projects before the ground freezes.
I hope that you will be able to enjoy a round or two this weekend a high of 60 tomorrow and no packers on Sunday should be just about prefect golf for November
