A short but busy week
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 pipe was fitted in place, backfilled and sodded back over.
Next up was replacing the pea gravel walk way to the restroom on 13 Sabot. New pavers were installed on both the entry and exit walks and match the curbing that was put in on the other side of the path last week. We will dress up the landscaping here next week.
With the weather in the 60's on Tuesday we acquired some more asphalt mix to continue smoothing out some bumps along the paths. Our new plate tamper makes these budget conscious repairs possible. We will be addressing the paths on a wholesale level this spring.
One last project for the week was installing some additional irrigation left of the path on 8 Manakin. This is one of the few shaded bluegrass areas on the Manakin and the irrigation coverage here was inadequate. Four smaller heads spaced at 50 feet were placed along the wood line and adjusted to throw back towards the cartpath. This is a popular area for balls to end up so next season it will be irrigated and groomed properly.
As we mentioned the last few weeks, the Manakin greens we will be aerated on this coming Monday, December 2nd. Today we aerated the chipping green as a test run. The picture above is the end result of the aeration and a rolling. As you can see there will be very minimal impact to play. We will be pulling small 1/4" cores out and simply blowing them off and picking them up. This is a just a sneaky way at the end of a season to pull some more organic matter out of the greens. Once we finish aerating Monday, and get the leaves cleaned up (again) on Tuesday, we will start putting the turf colorant out on the Manakin Wednesday. You will know it when you see it! Happy Thanksgiving!