Grass explosion

After an inch and a half of rain came down last Friday, the humidity kicked in along with our fertilizer, and the Latitude started blowing out of the ground. All the holes have now been mowed at least once. All the weeds have been sprayed and we will be putting our 3rd truck of sod down today. We are shaping up nicely as we cross the line to be inside a month from opening on September 24th.

We have been dealing with weeds on both courses. On the Sabot it has been easy to see where herbicide was applied to take out any goosegrass, sedge, or crabgrass. The herbicide sets the bermuda back slightly but it grows out in about two weeks. The herbicide we are using on the Manakin has much less impact on the bermuda but has to applied at least twice to be effective.

The greens surrounds on the Manakin have now all been core aerated and topdressed. We also ran a stick edger around the greens to help slice off any bermuda trying to creep its way into the bentgrass.

We tested out the aerator on 18 Manakin this week to get it ready for Monday. The weather looks to cool off over the weekend so the greens will be primed and ready to breathe a little and take on some sand in the holes. The greens will be healed and should be putting very nicely for opening.

The mowers are going pretty much non stop now. The bermuda is loving the weather and growing like crazy.

Our first few holes are pretty much finished filling in and we will now start to treat them like a real golf course. The fairways mowers are out and starting to drop the heights down on the fairways, tees and surrounds. The mowers are set now at .65" and headed down to around a half inch by the time we are ready to let golfers out. We are pretty happy with how things have come together, with good temperatures and timely rains. Now we just have to seal up the details and keep up with the mowing!