Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

The fairways on the Sabot have grown in nicely, mainly from the bermudagrass starting to wake up. We will begin fertilizing these fairways to help the bermuda along and then look at starting to take the ryegrass out with herbicide mid-May. We do have our new weather station up and running. On Weather Underground you can search for the KVAMANAK9 station. Select it as a favorite and you will be able to see all kinds of current and past data like temperatures, humidity and rainfall amounts. The station is mounted between the Golf Shop and the cart barn and updates every 60 seconds. Having the station online allows us to watch rainfall in real time which enables us to adjust planning and irrigation schedules accordingly. The bermuda on the Manakin is also starting to wake up. We are just about a month away from our first herbicide application to begin the re-grassing project (May 28th). The next 4 weeks will give the bermuda plenty of time to wake up and be ready to take up th

REMINDER: The Sabot greens will be aerated and Dryjected on Monday April 29th and Tuesday the 30th. During this time, we will be pulling 3/8" cores and backfilling with topdressing sand. The greens will also be Dryjected with additional sand. We expect the greens to be fully healed in 2 to 3 weeks. Aeration is a necessary evil that serves a great benefit to our bentgrass surfaces. The passages supplied for air and water movement help firm the surface and create opportunity for strong root growth. We sincerely thank you for your patience during these few weeks! The Manakin greens will not be aerated until after the course is closed for the re-grassing. The Sabot crew got the approach area on 3 cleaned up and prepped for sod early in the week. The french drain has been sucking up water nicely and this area has firmed up despite the continued rain on the weekends. We stripped up bermudagrass sod from a nursery area over by the indoor tennis building to cover up the w

This past Friday we took some time during the Senior Member Guest to get moving on installing more perennial flowering plants around the Clubhouse grounds. The coreopsis for example that we placed around the putting green are deer resistant, put on a great flower all season and are very drought tolerant. As we move through the grounds around the club we will be aiming to make plantings more sustainable while reducing labor demands but increasing aesthetic impact. Out on the Golf Course the bermudagrass is greening up nicely. You should be able to take notice how much faster the Latitude 36 sod around the Manakin greens is greening up versus the older bermudagrass on the Sabot. The old common bermudagrass on the Manakin is also starting to slowly wake up. These weeds are what we are waiting for to get started with the full Latitude conversion. The common bermuda needs to be up and growing at full speed in order for the herbicide to have its full effect in eradicating the

What this Blog is going to supply is weekly updates about all things happening within the 490 acres that encompass Hermitage Country Club Golf Courses. Not only is it important to showcase what our employees are accomplishing on a day to day basis, it is equally important to try and explain why we are implementing certain practices. This is a wonderful first picture that shows long tenured John Gibson repairing a 6 inch main line on 5 Manakin last week. We will be addressing a number of irrigation issues this spring. One of the first techniques we have adjusted on both Golf Courses is how the bunkers are raked. Bunkers on both courses have flashed up faces that present a challenge to golfers and provide aesthetic interest. The faces are now being left smooth and only the bottoms of the bunkers are raked. New, more aggressive rakes are being used to keep the bottoms "fluffy". The faces are smoothed with the back of a standard bunker rake. The smooth faces allow the