Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  With the irrigation project isolated on #1, we now can finish off a few projects of our own behind the new pipe installation. A big french drain was cut in here off 3 cartpath to help direct water away from this front right green side bunker. The bridge by 4 green was rebuilt with fresh treated lumber. The old dirt path has also been prepped for new asphalt all the way to the bridge on #5. This path and transition should be nice and smooth come the opening of the front nine of the 19th of April. We have also been working on replacing the old cobblestones with new pavers around the front of the Sabot. The new greens continue to grow through the cold and we have dropped the height down another .01" this week. They are recovered from their aeration and looking great. The irrigation team is at the top of the hill on 1, headed towards the tee. The rain storms have not been helping but the guys continue to grind towards the finish line. The cartpath from #1 Sabot tee to our cut throug...

  We came up with a perfect week of weather for aerating greens this week. Two dry sunny days were followed up with another shot of rain on Wednesday. The Sabot back nine greens were where we started on Monday. The deep tine aerators started the process by driving half inch solid tines about 8 inches into the surface. The dryject machines followed and quickly injected about 20 tons of sand into all 9 greens.  The dryject puts the sand right where we want it, diluting the top organic layer of our greens. We are once again going as aggressive as possible here on the back nine in front of the greens resurfacing to be completed this coming winter. After the dryject we pulled half inch cores out and blew off the resulting organic matter. More sand was put down on top of the open holes. Starting out with the dryject is basically a head start for aeration. Working sand into the holes with traditional aeration is much more difficult. The greens were brushed and rolled and then the aer...

  The heavy rain that is coming down now was predicted early in the week so our focus was to make the most out of the moisture from the sky. We finished up composting the front nine of the Sabot wall to wall and then used some extra to do the rough on the Manakin. The compost continues to help us build the soil and firm things up while supplying a slow feed of nutrients through the season. The area left of 12 Sabot fairway where we removed some trees for better sunlight was prepped and sodded over with turf type tall fescue on Wednesday. The other half of the sod truck carried Latitude sod that we laid over the new shape left of 1 Sabot fairway. We came up just short on sod here and the left of 2 Sabot cart path remains to be sodded as well. So long as the sod farm isn't under water come Monday we will get more sod to finish up these areas. We have grown tired of looking at the drainage lines on 16 and after washing out a few times we decided to go ahead and sod them over. We ran t...

  It has been a while since we could prepare for a significant amount of rain. Joe punched some holes in the upper range tee Monday and put down some more ryegrass and compost to see if we can jump start this area. Even though the wind was blowing 40mph on Monday the bermuda fairways enjoyed the 80 degree weather. The non-overseeded vamont on the Sabot front nine is greening up faster than the Latitude thanks to the lack of traffic.  This week we started composting all the turf on the Sabot besides the back nine fairways. With fertilizer and fuel prices off the charts, we'll be using certified organic compost to keep the turf moving this year. The irrigation crew is working past 5 tees and over to 4 tees.  Passing the new black tee on 5 Sabot. The wiring for our new stream recirculation pump is also in this trench headed to the bathroom for final hookup. 4 green misses having golfers come visit! The new greens are down to .160" compared to the back nine height of .120". T...

  We have new sprinklers working on the Sabot! The water is actually charged up from 9 back to 6 tee. 5 fairway should be completed this weekend, leaving 4 back to 1 left for installation. The reason we are going backwards is simply because it was easier to start the mainline right at the pumphouse, on 9 green. It has been very dry, so the crew is moving along but we are still at about a week per hole pace. This puts us at the beginning of April for a completed install. Taking the other two weeks to clean things up and flatten out some disturbance will put us very close to the April 19th projected opening date. Here is a video of the guys pulling the 2" lateral line across the fairway on 5. This is done essentially every 60 feet all the way through the golf course. Not a fast process and it takes quite an effort to prep and then repair around each valve and sprinkler head time and time again. Every lateral line taps into the mainline. While the hole has to be large in able to ...