Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

It is a short holiday week with most of our crew on vacation but we wanted to take advantage of some beautiful weather. With temperatures well above freezing we were able to get the Capillary concrete installed in the chipping green bunkers. This aggregate concrete is laid out at a 2 inch depth and then just lightly rolled smooth. The mix comes out of the concrete truck and then brought to the bunker with our dump utility vehicles. The 10 yards of mix is hand shoveled and raked into place. The mix stacks up nicely no matter the slope. The aggregate will drain at almost 100 inches of water per hour. The idea is that the rain can travel through the fresh bunker sand and then enter the capillary concrete and move into the french drain at the bottom. With the water moving through the aggregate, the sand won't be displaced by any rain like in the past. This means virtually no more washouts, reduced maintenance demand, and extremely consistent bunker play. We left open

Painting is finished on the Manakin. The extra black in the mix helped. We will see how it holds up with the weather over the winter. Mechanic's new work bench is up and running. This green lean-to building in the middle of our shop area mainly served as a leaf catch. It's gone and has opened up our shop area very nicely. We will have much better flow through the yard and more flexibility in where we place implements. The building will be replaced in a few years through the capital program with a proper building. Our old cart fleet was lined up and traded in this week. The new Yamaha fleet is outstanding. These carts have more room, better suspension, and more power for getting things done. Not to mention the glorious comfort of having a roof and a windshield to deflect whatever mother nature throws at us. The crew is ecstatic to be afforded these new rides! This cart fleet is even built into the operating budget now and does not impact the capital p

With a pretty good dose of rain on Monday and some low temperatures we turned our focus to some projects at the Maintenance Facility. Our upper shop building has a good footprint but hasn't really been utilized that well. We went after Carlos and Dunstano's work station. It was hard to get them to agree to change something that they have worked with for almost 20 years, but I think they will like this better. Outside we finished clearing out under this "structure" that used to house the gas and diesel tanks. The fuel tanks were moved to a more central location this past spring and they have worked well. This area just turned into a catch all and was blocking more parking and general flow. Into the dumpster it went. We will hopefully pour a concrete pad here when the weather warms back up a bit. The guys started working on our next set of bunkers rakes to eventually make it out onto the Sabot this spring. The rakes are sealed up with Polyurethane

Even after close to 3/4" of rain on Sunday we were able to get the greens aerated on the Manakin on Monday. 1/4" cores were pulled out of the upper 2.5 inch profile. Our organic matter tests were very indicative of the need to continue managing the top layer of our greens. The key to firm, healthy and consistent putting surfaces through the season relies on this upper end of the profile to be lower on organic matter. The cores were simply blown off and then scooped up with a shovel. The greens were rolled and brushed by hand to knock down any remaining sand. The holes are certainly visible but have very little impact on ball roll. Overall this is a minimally invasive process that serves our greens profiles well going into the winter. The bluegrass on the Sabot is looking great. While still thin in spots, the surface is holding up and taking up enough water to continue letting carts out in most areas. Originally as we planned out the Manakin re-grassing

After a wet weekend this week started off with a few nice days. The verticutter took a trip around the Sabot greens on Monday, removing a lot of lateral growth and further helping dial in the texture of the turf. A little amount of topdressing went down after the verticutter and was brushed in with our pull behind brush. The greens were mowed in a different direction than the verticutter went and we used the out front brushes to get a nice clean cut. We will continue to work on the texture of the bentgrass greens this fall which helps provide a smoother more consistent roll. We jumped in to a few projects on Monday, the first one being the sink hole on 13 fairway Sabot. There was a spot in the fairway that continued to sink all year. The pipe that you see in the foreground is the culprit. The entire bottom of that piece was rotted out. Luckily each other side of the pipe looked ok, so we were able to just cut the bad part out. A new piece of plastic drain pip

A few more frosts have really turned the Manakin off color the past two weeks. The only green color that is left is from a pigment spray last Monday. As we have discussed here, we were trying to use pigments, which are applied at a light rate (22 oz per acre) to maintain some color until December. The cold temps and rain have degraded that pigment but we are still going to wait until the first week of December to get our colorant out for the winter. The colorant is applied at around 4 gallons per acre and will hopefully provide a much deeper color for two months after applied. We are trying to be patient so that the colorant lasts through the winter and maybe just needs one more touch up in February. The Sabot is producing its green color naturally with the bluegrass seed. We applied some fertilizer through the sprayer this week to help keep the bluegrass moving and darken up the color a bit. We also applied some wetting agent to help keep rain water moving through the profil