Rattle Snakes - be careful

Happy Memorial Day Weekend to all of my readers out there.

This is always a very busy weekend for us as we host one of major tournaments, the LT Classic.  This years field has 136 players and the week leading up to this has been extremely busy getting the golf course ready for the event.  Things have really peaked right now and the course is in great shape.  A little rain by mother nature and some warm sunny spring days has things playing great, greens are rolling there usual 12', and your maintenance staff has been working very hard and doing an exceptional job to get everythinginto tournament condition.

Here are a few pictures from this mornings prep work.

Hole #13

Remember - we do have rattle snakes in the tall native grass areas.  Right now all of the babys are coming out of the dens, so please be careful if you are looking for a ball in the native.  The maintenance staff is seeing about 5-10 snakes every morning on the course.

This is one of the largest ones we have seen on the course in years, most of them are 1-3 ft in length.

New Assistant Superintendent

I am pleased to announce that we have hired a new assistant superintendent to join our agronomy team. Jacob Teaford is a graduate of the Washington State University turf program, and has worked at both Manito Country Club and Palouse Ridge Golf Club.

We are very excited to have him join our team and please welcome him next time you see him out on the golf course.

Grass Range Tee

The grass driving range tee is now open for the season.  The schedule will be the same as last year with hitting off of the grass on Wed, Thur, Fri, Sat, and hitting of the matts on Sun, Mon, and Tue.

As the tee was constructed and grown-in last spring, we did not open it until mid-June and closed it the beginning of Oct.  My planned schedule is similar this year by giving it a little growth and recovery time in the spring here.  Now that it is actively growing we will open it each year in mid-May and leave it open until the turf starts to slow down growth the beginning of Oct.  While it is actively growing, we can quickly grow all divots back in.  The days on the turf will stay the same as last year with 4 days on the turf and 3 days on the matts.  It is a smaller tee because we did not have room to build it bigger, so 4 days gives 1 month to work through the tee front to back with a different setting each day, also meaning we have 1 month to re-grow the previous divots before we are back on that same location.   Last years timing worked out very good and it is exciting to see that we can be back on the turf for a practice facility for the next 5 months.

Walkmowers on Greens

The walkmowers came out on greens today for the first time this season.  We use a ride on greens mower, called a triplex, through out the winter and the shoulder seasons of spring and fall.  Once the greens are cleaned up after spring aerification we start walk mowing the greens and do that until we aerify in the fall.

A triplex going across the green early spring - 3 reels contour independently, tires on the green, front and rear small rollers

The walkmowers provide a far superior putting surface after they are mowed compared to the ride on mower, but it takes 3-4 operators, mowers, carts, and fuel to do the job that 1 person and 1 machine can do the rest of the season.  That is why we only walk mow during our prime golf season.

 

Walk mowing #18

The walk mowers provide a better surface because of a multiple of reasons, 1)  there are no tire tracks going across the greens, 2)  the mower provides a better quality of cut the way it contours and rides across the green, 3) they provide less stress on the plant which opens it up for disease or more dehydration,  and 4) it is much easier and more effective to operate in tight places around bunkers and green surround.  The two most important benefits in my opinion are 1)  the walkmower rides on a rear drum that creates a rolling effect across the green leaving a smoother surface.  Similar to the dedicated roller that we use on greens, just not as heavy or effective, and 2) we utilize brushes on the mowers to stand the grass up before it is mowed and take the "grain" out of the green.

 

Once the tires are removed for mowing, the machine rolls on a large rear drum

Brushes on the mower that are put in the down position while mowing

Triplex mowers have come a long way in engineering and design the last few years but a walk mowed green is still superior to a green mowed with a triplex. 

Boomless Nozzles

There are many applications in the golf course industry where we are finding boomless nozzles to be very useful.  One of our applications is weed control in the native grass.

With a boomless nozzle we can travel along the edge of the native and spray out 50 ft to control any weeds on the edge.  We find the edges are the most visual and have the highest amount of golfer traffic.  It also prevents any tire tracks from being in the native, which look poor and tell others that they can drive there.   All of those hard to reach areas where you can't drive but still need to apply a herbicide, plant growth regulator, or a fertilizer, like bunker faces or steep banks, are areas where we use our boomless nozzle set-up.  We just covered 8 acres of native bordering the maintained turf on the golf course in 3 hours.

Rockchuck Classic

This weekend we have the ladies Member-Guest tournament, called the Rockchuck Classic.  The little rockchucks are always an exciting touch to add to the course.

Rockchucks

Wait for me....

The new tee on 13 is open for play for the ladies

Iris's and other flowers starting to bloom

Good luck ladies, and I hope you enjoy the course.  Thank you to all the staff at LGCC for your hard work this week preparing for the event.

Irrigation Project - Seeding

With everything wrapped up on the irrigation project on holes 6 and 7, the only thing left to do was to re-establish turf in the areas that were lacking irrigation in the years past.  We aerified the areas with short tines to rough up the surface, seeded with Kentucky Bluegrass, and dragged everything in.  We are getting some great germination and growth right now.

Germination

The key will be to keep the water on it for this initial warm spell and please keep cart traffic off the thin areas for the next several weeks.  If we can do that I feel we can have a fairly good stand of turf in these areas come summer.