This week at Sunset: 8-7-2017

Well, it’s been a busy three weeks since my last update. In that time we had a successful Ramsey Pidcock, aerified our greens, and had close to 4” of rain. There was a cold front that brought in cooler overnight temperatures (low of 63 degrees on 8/1) and a few days of some soaking rain.  The rain was certainly welcomed with beating in the sand on our greens and also with some of the irrigation issues that we’ve been having.

Speaking of irrigation, the new pump has been giving us issues with keeping a prime. So, Randy Knight and his guys addressed that issue and we are now able to prime the pump more efficiently. We are waiting on a part to be delivered so that it can be installed on the backup pump and once that is installed the pump should be near completion. We have begun to notice some leaks occur and blowouts on some of our old heads and pipes. That’s the unfortunate drawback when upgrading a pump. The pipes in the ground being 35+ years old will begin to show their age and so we will be making irrigation repairs as we move forward.

The greens aerification last Monday and Tuesday (7/31-8/1) went rather smoothly. We pulled ¼ inch cores and topdressed the greens with a little more coarse sand than before. We aerified the putting green and front 9 on Monday and the remaining holes on Tuesday. Our process involved topdressing the green first with the sand, aerifying the green, allow the cores to dry, dragging/brushing to break up the dry cores and fill in the holes, applying more sand, as needed, and dragging/brushing again. Some of the holes on the greens had some ‘bridging.’ This will happen when moist sand clumps at the top of the aerification holes and requires more dragging or sometimes more sand. Since we used ¼ inch tines the heal time is quicker and also requires less sand to fill the holes. The setting that we used equaled to around 100 holes per square foot. So, it was less disruption and quicker heal time. The one thing that we were not able to accomplish was fertilizing the greens the day after. Because we needed a functional irrigation system to water in the granular fertilizer we put off this process till today (8/7). The encouraging thing though that I’ve noticed is how well the greens have healed without fertilizer and the help of the rain.

Green topdressed waiting to be aerified.

Green being aerified.

Cores drying before being dragged.

After dragging/brushing in sand and cores.

As a reminder, please remember to keep golf carts behind the white lines that you see throughout the golf course. We do not need any traffic inside those white lines or around the greens. With the Bermuda grass in its most vulnerable stage with the transition in full swing it is important to keep traffic away from highly sensitive areas- greens complexes, tops of teeboxes, and other weak areas throughout the course. Help us out by keeping your golf cart behind the white lines and off the green complexes and near the tops of tees. Those of you who use pullcarts are fine to cross the line as pullcarts are lighter and less aggressive. However, make sure not to pull your carts across the green. Again, I want to thank everyone for helping us keep your golf course healthy and in shape.

Thank you for following us this week as we strive to get better every day. As always, please feel free to reach out with any questions/comments that you may have by using this blog, Facebook page, or emailing me at davisjoey@hotmail.com. Thanks for reading!

See you on the course!

Joey Davis