Not a great week of weather, next week looks better
Last Saturday the tropical storm drifted a little west and just parked over top of Manakin Sabot. We had more than a few loyal blog readers report back over 5 inches of rain all around the golf course. The bunkers held up for the most part and our continued drainage and aeration work continues to pay dividends!
With some 50 degree nights and no sun all week the bermuda was not moving anywhere. We don't have many days left where we can fool around with sod so we went after 7 blue tee this week. This tee was severely crowned so level teeing space was limited. 6 Sabot black tee also benefitted as the first move was actually to level that tee as well and then move the sod from 7 blue to 6 black.
The rest of the sod from 7 blue and the surround was used to patch up little spots in the rough around the Sabot.
We have upgraded our laser level to a dual plane laser which makes things a lot easier in the tee building arena. Instead of a flat plane and having to adjust the receiver up and down, the new laser broadcasts a beam at whatever plane we want. In this case we sloped the tee 1% from front to back and 1% from right to left. The receiver tells us exactly where we need to be down to the millimeter all the way across the tee.
Ben worked the new grade in nicely. The teeing surface here is almost doubled with minimal soil added in.
A small amount of organic sand mixture was added to the top and then raked smooth. Sod is scheduled for Monday afternoon this coming week.
The rest of the Sabot team finished up work along the lake bank and dam this week. These sucker weeds and trees jeopardize the integrity of the dam so keeping them cut once or twice a year limits their root growth.
The fall plants are blooming! This leonotis is new this year next to the aster on the back lawn. The larger salvia is also starting to put on its fall flower.
This week we mapped some specific areas where cart traffic will be limited around greens as our bermudagrass goes into dormancy. Brown posts were put out this week to mark the areas and then a golf cart was driven all the through the course and tracked (yellow line) by Visage. 5 mph zones were then drawn into place. These zones will be active selectively this fall and most of the winter. You will be able to see the zones on your golf cart screen. By limiting traffic around the greens during dormancy we hope the Bermuda can come out of dormancy a little stronger than in years past.