What a difference a few days of no rain does. The golf course is actually firming up nicely and over the last 2 days everything is starting to green up. We are getting a lot of work done on the course this week. We have pressurized the irrigation system and have a few irrigation breaks that we are having to dig up and replace some pipe. We will be done buy the end of the week. We also moved and added a few irrigation heads on the course that will give us much better coverage then we had before. I also have a crew finishing up the bunker work we were not able to complete last fall. 3 green bunker turned out great. Today, we also started to work on 8,7,18 greens bunkers that are always holding water after rains events. We exposed the tile and then we will add new drainage stone and pipe. We have done this type of work on a few other bunkers with success in the past. These are the worst of the remaining trouble bunkers on the course and will work on the rest in the fall or as time allows. I am sure that you have also noticed that we have been core aerating around the course. We are also incorporating seed into these areas. Many of the locations are high traffic areas or do not have good irrigation coverage. I have chosen to seed with Tall Fescue in many of these areas. Tall fescue is much more tolerant to dry conditions and with the extensive root system should do much better under the stress of traffic also.
We have also completed the first go around in the fescue turf areas on the course. We applied a pre-emergent herbicide to control crabgrass and foxtail. I will wait another week or two for the the next application to control any remaining weeds and undesirable grasses.
Overall could not ask for a better start to the week We will slowly start to lower the greens mower height over the next 2 weeks and get on a "normal" mowing pattern the golf course is off to a good start and I hope that you as excited as I am to finally see the sun.