Spring is our ugliest season! Manakin greens aeration set for Monday & Tuesday
Just like every other spring, while the redbuds, cherries, dogwoods and tall fescue are showing off, our bermuda is the ugly duckling. If you want to see where issues with shade are or where it's wet vs dry all winter, or where we sprayed post emerge herbicide for poa, or where the poa is breaking through our pre emerge, or where the most cart traffic is, then it is all on display. On this last day of March we are actually still ahead of the game in comparison to last year. Over the next few weeks we will continue to green up and the mowers will even things out quickly as our season begins!
The Sabot greens are recovering nicely despite a few more nights in the 40's. The 80 degree temps next week should help close up these already small holes. The same exact process will be performed on the Manakin greens this coming Monday. On Tuesday everyone will play the front of Sabot to the front of Manakin and then Wednesday we will be back to 27 holes open. The Sabot back nine will open April 18th as planned.
The back patio is getting closer! We have loaded our new planters with potting soil and plants will be going in on Wednesday this coming week. On Monday the privacy fence will come down and we will begin installing new irrigation for the back lawn. Grading will happen all week and then bermudagrass very similar to the Manakin (Tahoma) will be laid on the new lawn. It is very exciting to get this area cleaned up and ready for action!
Out on the golf course we have more or less finished up with our tree work for the winter. Here on 4 Manakin we have attempted to get some more sunlight and air through to the bermuda here by the cartpath. 1 cedar tree was removed and the others were pruned up along with the large pine.
We are also trying to finish up checking bunker depths for start of the season. The old drains in this bunker on 15 continue to be a nuisance so we just dug down and pulled out all the gravel. These bunkers will have to survive until November 1st when we can continue rebuilding.
The sod work on this old pine straw bed turned out nicely here on 14. We'll continue working on cleaning up all the other pine straw beds and putting out our new straw. 14 fairway is in a nice protected micro environment here, usually one of the first to green up. This property will look much different in 2-3 weeks!