Cleaning up around the edges....

Since there are so many large trees in such a tight area, establishing playable turf in certain areas is impossible.  To clean up the area, we have cut in an outer edge, applied 'round-up' to the area and covered with mulch.  This is an instant improvement and gives the area a fresh and clean look.  This is the first area we have converted, but we will be doing more in the future months.  The area you see in the below picture is #3 (south of Woolworth) along the cart path.

Before

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

     

After

#18 Tree Work

The last of the planned tree work (until November) was completed on Friday.  As you can tell from the pictures below, right of #18 fairway was overgrown and in desperate need of a heavy prune.  In total, we removed three trees along the right edge and all the remaining trees were pruned up.  This fall, we will remove two more trees that are tucked in there and once done, we will add a irrigation head and seed the bare spots and establish turf in those bare areas.  The fairway mow pattern was shifted over to the right as well.  This will help give a clear shot to the green if you hit along the right edge.  Huge Improvement!

Before

After

Earthworms in Fairways

Over the past month, most of  the comments are being directed towards the earthworm issue that is on the fairways.  I am aware of them and we are working on addressing the issue.  This is a very delicate issue as there are very few (two) products that will help eradicate the problem.  Both of the products require immediate water (preferably rain) to activate the active ingredient and push it through the soil to reach the target (in this case-earthworms).  For long term control, we will be making a test plot with three different options (Early Bird Organic Fertilizer, Sevin, Topdressing Sand) to determine which is most effective.

Just wanted to touch on this topic as people are asking, so know that we're aware and working on fixing it.      

Greens Overseeding with T-1 Bentgrass

In effort to promote more bentgrass in the greens, we have begun our greens inter-seeding program.  We seeded greens at 3.5 lb/M with T-1 seed.  This variety of bentgrass was picked due to it's ability to out compete the Poa over time.  We have constructed an aggressive plan and will seed greens 2x/year for the foreseeable future in order to see the results we're looking for.  

Once we got the seed in the ground, we followed with a light topdress and brushed in.  That will help get the seed down in the seed bed made by the spikes on the seeder.  Once brushed, we watered it all in and you can't even tell we did it.     

Seeder mounted on 4-wheel cushman