A Brief Break From Winter

We've been looking for a week like this for a long time.  The ground isn't fully cooperating, but the sun is a welcome sight and the temperatures are perfect.  For a brief time late last week we looked to this week's forecast hoping that we might be able to get our winter weed control sprayed in the zoysia.  We also had a sliver of hope that we might get to bring in the contractor for deep tine aeration (this is a job we had to skip last year).  Unfortunately, the ground is still too wet for either job to happen. 

However, we are still making the most of this brief spell of good weather.  Yesterday we were able to spray the zoysia around the greens to kill unwanted winter weeds like annual bluegrass.  We'll try to dodge the weather and ground conditions over the next month to get the rest of the zoysia sprayed.  

In the picture below, it's easy to see what happens if we don't apply our winter weed control. This is from last year when many of the fairways were too wet to spray.  In this picture you can see the path the sprayer made along the edge of the fairway.  The green stuff in the middle is poa annua (annual bluegrass).  If we can spray when the zoysia is dormant it's MUCH less expensive.  If it stays too wet for us to get the sprayer out before the zoysia starts greening up, then we have to use a different product that costs A LOT more.  The pre-emergent product we apply in late summer obviously isn't as effective as we'd like it to be.  

In addition to the small dent we made in weed control, we also worked on giving the greens a little relief.  Today we took the aerator out and worked through most of the front nine.  We'll keep going tomorrow until the expected rains stop us.  

We set up the machine with a combination of 1/4" diameter solid tines (the kind we use frequently in the summer) and 1/4" diameter hollow tines.  This set up allows us to remove a very small amount of the excess organic matter near the surface with minimal disruption.  This is a "band aid" at most, but the greens need air after 5 months of being saturated.  It's not the job we hoped we could do, but it's better than nothing.  The deep tine machine is still on the books for April 23rd so hopefully the weather will cooperate then. 

Blowers move the small plugs into a pile.  We shovel the piles up and then roll the green

It's a slow walk back and forth

Late in the fall an irrigation pipe broke in the left rough on hole one.  Jimmy and Alan were able to tackle that Monday.  The ground is so wet we can't tamp the soil back into the hole, but the pipe is back together.  We'll get it wrapped up asap.