2 months from planting, less than 3 weeks from opening
The days are getting shorter as is the time before the Manakin reopens. We are just shy of 2 months since the first sprigs hit the ground. The Latitude continues to fill in and we are now in a full blitz mode to get the property looking like an actual golf course again. All the short cut lines have been marked and we are starting to drop the height down with daily mowing. We are working more towards the edges with weed control in the beds, weedeating around trees, bunker work and reinstalling the tee plaques.
The sand pile behind 9 green as well as the pile on 5 are gone! This was a major step to get all 100 acres topdressed, worked in and out of the way of the mowers. These areas will be sodded most likely next week.
The sod cutter is still finding its way around to thin areas through the Manakin. These areas get patched and root in quickly. We will be right up to the end with getting 99.9% of the course filled in adequately in two weeks.
10,000 square feet of bluegrass sod was added to a few shaded areas like here on 11 as well as behind 13 green, left of 18 fairway bunker and left of 8 cartpath. The bluegrass can tolerate a low mowing height as well as a brutal summer.
The fairway on 1 now connects down and through.
2 fairway has filled in nicely. The latitude literally is growing about a quarter inch a day.
We are starting to scrape the silt/algae build up off the bunkers and pull the weeds out. The original sand hasn't gone anywhere, there has just been a nice amount of gunk built up on top. We have some extra new sand ready to go and the bunkers will be back to normal for opening.
We broke the hydroject out of retirement this week to try and loosen up some of the newly constructed tees. We have not seen any significant rain in almost 3 weeks so the ground is very firm. The new tees are tough to get water on for establishment but some extra fertilizer and some water injection from the hydroject should help them finish filling in.
The bentgrass tees on the Sabot were aerated, topdressed and seeded (with more bent) this week. These tees take a beating during the season so this probably will not be the last time they are aerated this year. Next week we will look to start interseeding bluegrass into the bermuda tees on the Sabot. This will be our trial before we start to seed the fairways on September 29th and 30th.
The greens on the Manakin have filled in nicely from the aeration just a week ago. Can we keep these greens free of ballmarks after September 24????