The golf course maintenance staff has been busy for the last 3 weeks removing and cleaning up a few trees. They were removed because either they were dieing, unhealthy, in a poor location relating to irrigation or playability of the golf course, or a poor specie for the golf course. A poor specie could be one of many things - excess dropping of debris, blocking sunlight and/or air movement, or a shallow rooting system that competes with the turf for water and nutrients. If you look around the golf course where we have removed trees, most of them show an area of weak/thin/or bare ground that extends out to the branches of the tree. This is called the drip line, and is the outer edge where the roots grow too. That circle of weak turf shows that exact area where the tree roots are taking water and nutrients away from the grass. By removing a few of these trees, we will improve our turf health and grass cover in these areas.
Our process has been, first felling and cutting up the trees. The wood is located up near the sand bins along #9 if anybody would like free firewood, and staff has been hauling off all the branches to a designated location for future chipping.
This is the hardest and most time consuming part of the project, as these trees do have a lot of wood and branches in them, and I commend the staff on their hard work.
Thank you to Mike Welling for all of his help in the removal and cutting.
Then the tree stumps are ground up, creating a lot of debris for removal, and that area will be re-sodded in the next couple months.
Lastly, all the branches were chipped up and hauled off-site. This step is done because we do not have a sufficient dump site to dispose of all the tree branches.
We also going around to all trees limbing up low hanging branches. This is beneficial in many aspects as it allows a golf swing to be made under the tree, it allows better distribution of water, improved air movement, and allows us to get maintenance equipment around the trees.
This work will all lead to healthy turf and better playability on your golf course.
Jason Habeck
LGCC Superintendent
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