Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  The week started off with another drop of cold air, again reaching deep into the teens. Our bentgrass greens have not been this dormant in a number of years. The hardening off this winter is a good thing as the plant can build up stress tolerance mechanisms that it will again call on in the heat of the summer. The profiles finally thawed out Wednesday so after the rain today we'll see if any brown tissue mows off them on Friday. The frozen ground early in the week allowed us to get moving on some more tree removals. As in the past, all of our tree removals are focused on improving sun light and air movement for the turf along with making sure trees are healthy and not causing any safety hazards. Here on 13 Manakin we were able to get a little more sunlight on the landing area which should help more with keeping this area dryer and be able to wake up in the spring a little quicker. With the ground thawing Wednesday the guys jumped out and finally got the irrigation wired up on 11

  Two inches of snow materialized quickly Monday night, in front of the first real artic blast of the season. The snow blanket may of helped insulate the bermuda just slightly as some 12 degree air bombed in Wednesday night. Our guys are not used to being cooped up inside but that's what we were relegated to this week. Dunstano and Carlos have also been keeping Carlos' brothers Mario and Fortino plenty busy helping work through preventative maintenance on the equipment fleet. In the snow on Tuesday we ran out and collected all the flagsticks, benches, tee markers and bunker rakes. The benches have been sanded down and a more protective coat of paint has been applied. The white tees were taken off last week and brought to the powdercoating company in Ashland. This week we also took them the gold tees since they were in the second worst shape. The other four colors were sanded down this week and painted here at the shop. We should have our four colors back out next week for the w

  Our weather has changed this year to an unfortunate El Nino pattern . This normally means cooler weather and more rain for us on the east coast. The La Nina pattern that we were in the past few years brought a warmer winter and less rain but that ship has sailed. We got battered again with 2.6" of rain this past Tuesday, creating plenty of debris clean up and bunker repair. Before the rain we were able to get some Poa annua control out around the greens while the sun was out. These specific pre and post emerge herbicides applied don't move on to the green so it allows us to get right up to the edge of the bentgrass. More pre-emerge is set to be applied to the fairways and tees as soon as we can dry out for more than two days in a row. The rain has slowed progress on the Manakin irrigation project but we have plenty of time before the bermuda is going to be looking for supplemental water. The guys cut a trench through the oak trees between 8 and 11 last week in order to get t