Engage summertime

 

Here was the scene Monday, after 4 inches of rain the week prior, we were finally able to get the mowers out Monday to start hacking down the fairways and rough. With moisture in the ground and some heat the bermudagrass is moving in all directions nicely. This week has been beautiful with some cool dry nights although we did get another .2" of rain that brought in the cool weather Tuesday. 

The bentgrass is never going to enjoy getting pounded with rain in the summer. This week we worked to get all of our 15 fans up and running. Only 3 fans were left out for the winter so that meant 8 older fans were brought out and 4 new fans were mounted and tuned in for the season.

Installing the fans is quite a chore. You saw a few weeks ago where we ran power wire for the 4 new fans. A 40" deep hole is also dug so that the ground pole can be concreted in. Then we search for existing irrigation wires so that we can control the operation of the fan with our phones and the irrigation computer. The wires here on 7 Sabot were another 40 inches in the ground. John and Grant spliced the run and we are just about ready to go.

Here is a great tweet from another superintendent showing the benefits of the fans close to the greens. The fan sweeps across the surface and cools the canopy around 10 degrees. Through the summer these fans are imperative to help our greens in lackluster growing environments survive the long days and lasting stress. The temperatures and air movement at ground level are very different than 5-6 feet up in the air. Keeping these fans on day and night help ensure we have consistent putting surfaces no matter what the weather is serving up.

Jacob cut a 440 foot long trench on the left side of 14 stream this week. 2.5" pipe was installed in order to start recirculating water for this stream. We are just waiting on Dominion power to hook up our new electric panel and then we will be able to install a pump at the bottom of the stream. Water will be pushed up hill and allowed to flow down the stream, through a few rock waterfalls and back again to the pump.

It is hard to miss the tennis lawn this week. On Monday we sprayed it with some non-selective herbicide. This lawn previously was filled with all kinds of different cool season grass. On this coming Monday we will be starting to verticut and topdress the Manakin short grass, all 55 acres of it. The latitude sprigs will be brought over to the tennis lawn and we will grow in this area over the next 4-6 weeks. The verticut process will yield a 3 day closure on the Manakin while we accomplish this task. The front nine will open as soon as we finish cleaning up and brushing the sand in but that is all weather dependent. Verticutting and topdressing the latitude will ensure we are playing on a firm surface all summer long!