Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  Here comes another hurricane bringing more rain for the weekend. We have been getting crushed with rain weekly in October. This combined with a massive lack of sun and cooler temperatures has meant soggy conditions, especially on the low lying Sabot course. Temperatures will take a nose dive over the next week as well, we can only hope for some sun to come out. We have had plenty of rain to keep our bluegrass seed wet but it has been very slow to come up. It is starting to show its face now and we will begin fertilizing as the bermuda heads into dormancy. The bluegrass from last year are dark patches out there and the new stuff is still light green. There will definitely be some Poa annua mixed in this year, as it was last year, but we can deal with that later in the winter/spring. We dodged enough rain this week to get our projects on the Sabot finished up. Remember the old bentgrass blue tee on 5? There is the new one covered in Latitude bermuda. It has been moved to the right ...

  After 3 inches of rain last Friday, some humid weather moved in and kept the clouds at ground level early in the week. We got a break today and both courses are finally drying back out. Despite the fog, our entire week was dry which allowed us to accomplish all of our projects on Sabot as planned. The team started on 5 green surround. All 20,000 square feet of turf was stripped up and moved out of the way. There was a pretty ugly mix of cool season turf, warm season weeds throughout this area. Previously we had planned to re-sod this surround in the spring but thanks to Covid we had to hold off. With things back in line we were also able to reshape the entire area. Last year we had sodded out 5 approach to Tahoma bermudagrass. That sod did not go to waste and has now replaced the bentgrass that used to exist on 6 green tee and 8 black tee on Sabot. An operator from the golf course construction company Landscapes Unlimited camped out in our mini excavator all week. His first task ...

  There is not a whole lot left in the growth tank for the bermudagrass. Both the latitude and vamont are holding color well but we'll see what a few nights in the 30's does this weekend. We have been busy prepping the bermuda for winter by easing off mowing, raising heights, applying fungicides for spring dead spot and putting some potassium to help hold up to the cold. Besides the rain keeping things a little soft, conditions are still very fun out there. Despite some hefty rain over the weekend we started moving on some bunker projects this week on 2 Sabot. As we mentioned last week, this small pot bunker back right of the green was invisible from the fairway and rarely in play. We excavated the sand and soil and reshaped the area a bit. The bunker is now erased. In the spring we will mow this area at approach height and tie it in with the other side of the approach to increase the roll off area here on 2. We also pulled the sand and drainage out of the fairway bunker on 2. ...

  The weather over the last few days has been absolutely beautiful. Low humidity, no clouds and full sun means excellent growing weather and great playing conditions. We do have some rain in the forecast however. With the weather continuing to slow the bermuda growth to a halt, and a wet week ahead, we went ahead and pulled the trigger on overseeding the Sabot fairways with bluegrass again. Some of the bluegrass from last year is coming back but certainly not close to 100%. We simply dropped more seed in at 2/3rds the rate of last year to bolster what is already there. Time didn't really allow for a full verticut and scalping process to prepare a seed bed but we didn't want to injure what bluegrass was coming back anyway. The vamont still presents a nice seedbed for this tiny bluegrass seed so as the rains come, we hope to see the bluegrass take back over this fall and winter. The cartpath sealing work is finally over! About 9,000 gallons of sealant mix was applied to the paths...

  A concrete truck full of capillary concrete came in on Monday to finish off the fairway bunkers on 18 Sabot. Last year we tested a few larger, flatter bunkers with just doing the edge with the drainage material and it worked just fine. The smaller more sloped bunkers are filled completely with the permeable concrete. The bunkers were immediately tested Tuesday night with heavy rain and held up perfectly. New white sand filled up the last 3 bunkers on the back nine. 18 Sabot looks beautiful with all freshly renovated bunkers! One of our initiatives for the fall is to amplify our view of the lake from the clubhouse, 10, 18, 17 and even 16 Sabot. This will be done by periodically removing trees as we move through the cooler months. Hunter attacked the willow tree on the little island right of 18 fairway on Wednesday. Much better! The weather continues to be cool and the bermuda is not moving very much at all. This means we have to restrict practicing on the grass at the driving rang...