Dry and Warm! Sabot greens aeration Monday the 15th

 

We were ready for the warm and dry weather this week. 4 truck loads of capillary concrete were laid down on Monday and Tuesday. The bunkers on 1, 4, 6 and 9 now have their new drainage system installed.

4 trucks of permeable concrete held about 38 yards of mix. That means a little over 150,000 pounds of concrete was spread out individually through the bunkers by hand and spread smooth. The new drainage flows perfectly and by Wednesday we were ready to fill the bunkers up with sand.

Unfortunately when we went to dig into our pile of sand, the wind had exposed the worst thing possible, rocks. These 6 piles of sand, almost $13,000 worth, were contaminated at the quarry in North Carolina before they landed here. Since we had not had a problem before with the sand, we didn't think to dig in and check inside each load when it landed. The wind tipped us off before we started filling up the bunkers and sure enough rocks were all through the loads. The sand will be replaced on Tuesday and Wednesday next week and we will be back in action.

In the bunkers that we have already filled up, we took some more time to soak them down and run the plate compactor through them. A few more rains and a change over of the type of rakes we use should help these new bunkers firm up.

With bunker work on hold for a day or two we were able to continue on a few other capital projects. Jacob and Nick kept working on the new net at the back of the range. Jacob welded 32 new poles on top of the existing ones to make a 15 foot tall pole. Wire cable was strung through the top and bottom and we are in the process of hanging a new 15 foot tall by 325 foot wide net. This in house project is being accomplished at about 1/3 of the price a contractor would charge!

Our tree work is basically never ending but with spring on the way we are trying to find a stopping point. This dead pine was a major hazard to the right of 13 Sabot cartpath. It all but exploded when it hit the ground!

Our best news of the week is that John Gibson is BACK! After a 7 month hiatus with some old man problems, John is back in action. We have about 12 more satellite controllers to install on the Manakin and then that project will be finished up. We also saved all the tough leaks for him to fix so that he will have no problems sleeping at night. Welcome back John!

The second best news of the week is that our new track loader is now on site. This rubber tracked loader has a light footprint and essentially can accomplish anything, especially when paired up with the excavator. We are excited to get the bunkers finished up and dive into the tee projects that we have been talking about over the last few weeks.

The new black tee for 9 Sabot is still climbing towards the sky. All the old bunker sand is under here and Mike Ellis was nice enough to put us in touch with a project down the road that is bringing about 60 dump trucks of some great soil our way. We promise this new (gigantic) feature will fade away eventually, as we tie it in with native grass on the sides.

The deep solid tine aeration has been completed on the Sabot greens and now they are ready for this coming Monday. The solid tines this week went down between 8 and 9 inches and will give a great pathway for roots and water to drive deep into the profile this spring. On this coming Monday the Dryject contractor will be here and they will be first up. The machines will inject sand through the profile and then we will follow right behind pulling organic matter out of the greens with .4" diameter coring tines. We will be topdressing heavily and then possibly running the aerator over the first two procedures to poke some more solid tine holes. So yes, there will be a lot of holes in the greens for the next few weeks! Some cooler weather next week will slow the bentgrass down a touch but we are setting up for a great season with this aeration. As always we appreciated your patience during aeration!