Golf Course Maintenance Weekly 2/29/16

Spring has definitely been in the air the past few weeks shifting our efforts from winter projects to spring time tasks. One of those spring time tasks is a process called vertical mowing which is something we do on the greens when growth habits of the turf start to get more active.

Miguel vertical mowing #17 Green early Monday
morning.  GCM staff will come behind him and blow off
the mess then we will apply a light sand topdressing.

This is what a vertical mowing cutting unit looks like.

Vertical mowers sort of thin out the surface of a green eliminating some of the friction and aiding ball roll. If we want to get really aggressive we vertical mow the greens twice in two different directions. Typically we will go in one direction followed by a light topdressing of sand.

You might have seen these lines in the greens before
that were left by the thinning of the vertical mower.

The finishing touches of a vertical mowing operation is a
light sand topdressing. This entire operation is repeated
weekly or bi weekly in the spring and on an as needed basis
summer and fall. 

New Traffic Control Stakes

We recently made a minor change to the relatively  new Golf Cart Traffic Control protocols here at the club, which most everyone who has been taking advantage of the spectacular weather have already seen. We replaced the green and white exit stakes (stakes closest to the green) with red and white stakes. Green and white stakes still indicate where you should enter the golf hole with your cart and the red stakes indicate the area you should exit with your golf cart. Additionally we added one more red and white stake across the fairway from the three red and white exit stakes which delineates a imaginary line of sorts where carts should not proceed any further. 

New red and white stakes for exiting golf holes with
golf carts.

Golf cart exit area clearly defined on #1 with the new
red and white stakes. Green go, red stop. Pretty simple.

Irrigation Work in Progress

We added a few of our smaller irrigation heads on the south bank of the #16 green last week. As Ive mentioned on numerous occasions, these smaller heads dramatically improve irrigation coverage in areas that struggle in the summer months. These additional small sprinklers allow us to adjust the run times of  the large golf course sprinkler heads down so areas don't get to wet all the while providing superior irrigation coverage so soil moisture is properly maintained minimizing turf grass stress. 

#16 green bank getting some added irrigation coverage.

We will be starting and finishing another one of these irrigation projects along the cart path and walnut shells on #1 this coming week.

Gama getting started on adding some smaller irrigation
heads along the cart path on #1 which will extend along
the walnut shell edge today on 2/29/16.