Weather, Ponds, and Irrigation

The extremely dry weather was finally interrupted with a much needed rain.  We received .27" in our shop gauge on Thursday night although some portions of the course clearly received more than that.  We received another .45" Friday night.  The turf was struggling in many areas where poor soil, compaction, lack of irrigation coverage, or some combination of things existed.  Hopefully the dormant turf will bounce back soon.  

3 is a notoriously dry fairway and gets a ton of cart traffic.  It will bounce back.

The irrigation system is functioning much better since we installed the new controllers on each hole.  However, the distribution uniformity is still what it's always been.  Irrigation is a good supplement to rain, but a terrible substitute.  

New controllers are finally up and running

The irrigation pumps will not get a break even though it finally rained as they also serve to fill ponds.  The pumps and pipe cannot irrigate effectively and fill ponds at the same time.  Now that we can take a break from watering grass you will start to see pond levels come up some.  We do have 2 wells on the course, but they are far from adequate in a drought.  The well on hole 6 feeds 5 ponds, 3 of which are FLCA ponds.  All 5 of those ponds are used for homeowner irrigation.  Our irrigation system has to help out the well whenever possible.  

The "gazebo" pond is one of five ponds fed from the well on hole 6. 
The well is woefully inadequate for 5 ponds that 20+ homeowners irrigate from.  

STAFF

The staff is doing an awesome job of keeping up with hand watering on tees and greens.  These areas are bentgrass growing in a sand based profile.  We've never had it this intense this early in the season.  That's made for some great training opportunities and the guys are catching on quick.  Ryan is a machine when it comes to scouting and overseeing the bulk of this task.  It really is an art and a science that takes a tremendous amount of focus and effort.  Training guys how to use the probes, what to look and feel for, how to know when and where to water, how to get in and out of play,  and many other tiny yet critical details is a full time job.  We are blessed to have some guys willing to step forward and be part of the hand watering team.  The grass doesn't know what day it is or what time it is so being on this team means ignoring the clock and the calendar.  The rest of the staff has a predictable schedule, but Adam, TJ, Anthony, Garrett, Cody, and Curtis are at the mercy of conditions.  Too wet is far worse than too dry so hand watering is a must to avoid overwatering that would certainly occur using sprinkler heads.  Yes we have a sophisticated irrigation system, but a 7000 square foot green may only have 2 square feet of dry turf.  Finding those spots is tricky and delivering just the right amount of water is also tricky.  Thanks to these guys for putting up with us and powering through this tough stretch of weather.