August 31, the dawg days of summer are here!!!

We are officially in the Dawg days of Summer!!! Its almost oppressive outside and that gives me all the more respect for my staff for not only enduring, but pressing harder because I asked them to. Although we have received enough rain to float Noah's ark in the last 3 weeks, the staff has made great progress preparing for the upcoming season.

One huge project we have been working on is cleaning up the potato vine that consumes everything in its path. Here you can see how bad the hedge on 16 had gotten in one year. The potato vine had grown over 75% of the hedge in certain spots and completely consumed some of the palm trees.


Here is after my staff worked all day to remove the vine. Notice that you can now see the palm tree fronds.


My guys have completed removing as much vines they could from all of the hedges along the eastern property line and 16. In total they removed about 100 cubic yards of potato vine. For those of you who are here you'll notice massive amounts of the vine yellowing out as it dies along the cart path from 14 green to 16 tees. We are attacking it on a large scale now as it is starting to make new seed pods...the potatoes.

Along the cart path on 15 we have been doing a lot of work to remove all of the encroaching vine and exotic trees as well. Here's a quick video on what happens to the approaching enemy forest.


As you can see, I try to shred as much of the material as possible to use it as mulch. Also, it cuts down on the expense of having to haul off all the debris. Most of you know that we are tackling the monumental task of trimming all the palms trees in house this year and have seen the blog pictures of the massive amount of "waste" generated from the trees. Well, I've found a way to use that waste and turn it into finely shredded mulch for us to use around the course in our upcoming course wide mulch marathon. Check out this next sequence....

We trim the trees


We haul trimmings and any other horticultural waste to my shop


Then we do this....in one side as waste, out the other as usable mulch!


Take a look at this short video and see it in action!


Now that's recycling at its finest!!!

We've also been finishing up lots of other projects that got side tracked due to bad weather. I'm happy to say that we are finally finished with all of the new landscape enhancements. Here is a pic of some new palms planted on the left of #3 fairway to help knock down some of the those left turning shots just past the Plageman's house


I added a few palms here because of a severely high nematode count in the soil that made growing healthy grass impossible. Because this spot is within the required 30 foot buffer zone from any dwelling when using Curfew to treat for nematodes, we were not able to treat the area to control the problem. So instead of looking at thin, weed infested grass I planted the palms so we can purposely kill the grass and put down some mulch.


While the tree trimmer was on #8 green, I had him turn this dead cypress into a perfect snag. A snag is a dead tree left standing. Just because a tree is dead doesn't mean that it doesn't serve nature still. There are several reasons to leave snags up and probably the most popular is that birds of prey like eagles, owls, osprey, and hawks like to nest in snags. These birds like to use snags because they have large wind spans and they don't want to take a chance on damaging their only means of transportation in a tree that has lots of small, close together branches. By trimming off all of the "twiggy" material in this snag, and its close proximity to a lake, I created a perfect Osprey nesting site. I've seen several Osprey sitting on this tree so lets keep our fingers crossed.


I added these areca palms in front of the old maintenance building area between the driving range and #5 to break up the view of the building from the range tee. In a couple of years these new guys should be catching up to the really big arecas on the sides of the range and completely hide the building.


A little tweak to the course that is really nothing other than a height of cut change is this new run off area behind #8 green. I wanted to put this in prior to opening last year but didn't have time before we opened to get the grass cut down and used to being mowed short. This will be a nice compliment to the natural shape of the green and surrounds.


As you already know, a couple weeks ago we verti-cut the fairways pretty aggressively, followed by a light top dressing. Any areas that were a little bit thin or a crease was made from a machine were hand top dressed so we can keep the smooth contours. In a couple of weeks these lines of sand should disappear.


To help the fairway areas heal in and get full coverage, it would seem appropriate to give the grass a little food to promote new growth. Now when I buy fertilizer, I tend to buy a little bit more than what you would go buy at Home Depot. Here Eric is filling up a 4 ton spreader from a trailer called a kilabrew. Each one of the 4 hoppers can hold almost 5 tons of material. That would probably do your yard a few times, and many most of your neighbors too.


My philosophy on fertilizing (or feeding the grass) is similar to how I eat...or should eat I guess. I don't sit down once a month an gorge myself, at least I try not to. Most of the time I eat smaller amounts more often. That's exactly how I fertilize the course, small amounts more often or "spoon feeding." This way I feel the grass has a better chance of absorbing the food before it either floats down the drain in the summer or gets washed past the root system from irrigation. Starting now through April we will be out fertilizing the course about every 2-3 weeks with light rates of fertilizer to continually spoon feed in nutrients to promote a health turf.

You may have read in my last posting that I had the area's USGA Agronomist in to do a site visit. The purpose of the visit is to ensure the maintenance practices are in line with the overall long term success of the course for both health and playability. Part of what the Club receives in having the USGA out is a written report of what was observed during the visit. These reports are excellent in explaining in a non-biased way what the practices were in place when they visited, what observations were made, what observations have been made at other facilities that might be helpful, and what long term practices are recommended. I truely hope that you will take the time to read it and better understand your golf course and the science behind the maintenance practices. Click here USGA REPORT




News flash....its raining again! More to come, stay tuned.