Managing the wet and dry cycles of spring

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 work on 3. The sod isn't the absolute best but its free and we are attempting to make room to build ourselves a bentgrass nursery in that area by tennis. The bentgrass nursery will allow us to use plugs to replace blemishes on the greens from heron droppings, worn spots and also plug out some Poa annua.

With 3 just about finished up and our neighbors not asking for their excavator back yet we went to 13 and made another mess. A french drain was put in to the right of the path in order to catch all the runoff from the woods. The water is piped across the tee complex and into the native area. The area is drying up quickly and we hope to have everything cleaned up as nice as possible for the next rain storm this weekend.

The ryegrass as well as the bermuda has continued to green up and fill in on both Courses. We are now walk mowing approaches on both sides in order to provide a tighter more consistent surface around the greens.

The only real damage we have seen from the winter is on the forward range tee. Too much sand and too much traffic late in the year set this bermuda back for the spring. We aerated the forward tee this week and gave it a shot of fertilizer to encourage some recovery as temperatures continue to rise. Our goal is to be hitting off the rear grass tee next week. Because of the limited space on the grass tees we will use the mats on Monday through Wednesday and go to the grass Thursday through Sunday.

The deep tine aerator found its way onto the Manakin tees on Thursday. The tees have been amazingly wet. Poking 9 inch deep solid tine holes in them should help the water move down a little more quickly and have a very minimal impact to golf play.

Some quick guidance on divots: If you can find your divot and it did not explode, please replace it. If the replaced divot dies, we will strip it up and fill the divot with sand. If your divot is in 50 pieces, just fill your void with sand. The main goal is providing a smooth, fair surface for the player behind you. Our intention is to march through the fairways each Monday when we are closed and fill all the divots as necessary.

On Wednesday we had the Rainbird team come in and give our management staff a refresher on running the irrigation control system. In addition to our greens irrigation audit, we will be using the full capabilities of our control system to manage water as efficiently and judiciously as possible.

Boomer has taken a strong liking to chasing the geese (and birds and especially squirrels). The geese are starting to get bothered and the Course has been pretty clean this spring. The real test will be again in the fall when the larger flocks try to come back. Boomer will be ready!