The winter weather forced us to adjust our priorities quite a bit. Drainage installation and bunker repairs were on my wish list, but the weather did not allow us to address those things this winter. We have, however, taken advantage of the situation and accomplished a great deal despite the nasty weather. In a previous update I referenced the tree work that we did for the sake of improving turf health. The extended wet weather also allowed us to tackle some trees that were damaging cart paths. We hope to have the damaged cart paths repaired this spring.
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Note the damage this tree caused to the cart path |
- We have also been focusing on grinding reels with our new reel grinder. Our old unit was 28 years old and was inefficient and unsafe. The new grinder will soon be running constantly to keep things sharp for through the season. At mowing heights of .110" there is zero room for error.
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Gene grinding a greens mower reel |
- Every winter we apply Round Up to the dormant zoysia to control winter weeds. This year we made it around all the greens, but then the weather and ground conditions made it impossible to finish the other 38 Acres. Resorting to Plan B we recently made an application of Revolver (a selective herbicide that doesn't require zoysia to be dormant) in order to wrap up the project. It was more pricey than Round Up, but much better than the alternative of not addressing the weeds. For now the unwanted poa annua is still easily visible, but soon the effects of Revolver will be evident and the zoysia will be "clean". In the picture below the area marked "untreated" has now been treated with Revolver. The area marked as "treated" was done so with Round Up.
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Alan edging the outer margin of the bentgrass collar |
- For several years we've been stockpiling pine logs at the shop. Storms have knocked many of them over and in other cases we've cut them down when they die or create problems. Recently we spent a day with a large chipper in an effort to clean up the debris and create some useful mulch. We have been using this mulch to cover some of our maintenance paths and out of play areas that are not high profile. It isn't the prettiest mulch in the world, but it is helpful over bare ground.
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A full day of grinding several hundred logs yielded a large pile of pine mulch |
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some of the mulch spread left of the path at 9 tee |
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