Fall Winterization

This has been a very busy week winterizing all aspects of the golf course.  The weather had to suddenly change on us making it less enjoyable, but always a good feeling to have things set for cold weather. Most of the week saw lows around 15 and hi's in the upper 20's forcing us to move along just in time.

We started with removing the fountains in the pond, prepping the on course bathrooms for winter, winterizing the waterfall at the clubhouse, and then the waterfall and pumps along #1. After that we spent 3 days winterizing the complete irrigation system, which involves pressurized air passing through all the pipes and heads on the compete course to ensure everything is free of water.  After that pumpstations and irrigation satellites were cleaned for winter, and now we are ready for some colder weather.  We also managed to get in some good labor hours on leaf clean-up this week.

1 of the compressors used

Lines being blow out through a drain - swans are just decoys to keep geese away, hence they don't move

Blowing out heads with irrigation satellites

Heads being blown out

Next will be prepping the turf for winter with snow mold chemicals, continued leaf clean-up, and course set-up for winter play.  Stay tuned as we move through those processes.

Leaves, Leaves, and Leaves

Leaf clean-up is in full swing.  As it has been a warmer fall, the leaf drop is about 2 weeks later than past falls.

Course was just cleared 1 day ago and they are back

Our process for staff has been chasing leaves everyday blowing off greens, blowing out bunkers, blowing off tees and approaches, and then gathering them all together from those areas, including fairways and rough, to be mulched up by the rough mower.  We use to pick them all up but we have went more toward mulching.  It is better agronomically, less labor and equipment use, and prevents them from returning to the course during the next wind storm.

But they are beautiful colors

Maybe with a little more winter activity like this we will have less labor in leaf clean-up every fall.