Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

We are down to about half capacity this week as the staff tries to burn up their annual allotment of paid time off before the end of the month. The sun and warmth was here as we buttoned up the irrigation wiring on 17 and also wired up the greenside of 16. The staff continues to dwindle next week as will the temperatures. Looking into 2025 we have 14, 15 and 16 tees left to wire up and then we will head to 1-4 to finish off the irrigation renovation. Bunkers remaining to be renovated on Manakin are 11, 13, 14 and 16. Despite the near term weather the forecast for the rest of winter looks mild which is very welcome! This is your 287th blog post and the 48th of this year. Since March 1st we have mowed greens (average across both courses) 176 times, rolled greens 77 times, mowed fairways 54 times and raked the bunkers 210 times. We look forward to a little break in maintenance over the winter as the focus shifts to in-house capital projects.  For 2025, the Board of Directors has appro...

  We have had it all this week as the deep tine machine worked its way through both golf courses. Warm, cold, sunny, rainy and constant wind will summarize most days this winter.  After starting with some smaller tines on a different machine and not getting a clean hole, we moved to a different aerator and some half inch solid tines on wider spacing. These tines are going 8-9 inches deep into the green creating a nice space for winter root growth and water infiltration. The roller is out now smoothing everything out for the weekend. In some drizzle on Monday we had Bartlett tree out to take down this rotting oak hanging over the golf shop. This tree had accelerated the dropping of its branches this year and the base of the tree was really showing some unhealthy symptoms. The bucket truck made safe work of getting this tree down without putting a hole in the golf shop. They also had enough time to get us started on a large oak tree overhanging the baby pool that was also in bad...

  The third coldest day of 2024 is what it took to get frost to form on the fairways and greens for the first time this fall. There will not be much green bermuda left come next week and that is just fine. We are dry and ready for some winter work.  With below freezing temperatures keeping golf inside this week we did make some headway on winter tree work while the ground is firm and dry. A few trees on 3 Sabot came down to get more sun on the bottom part of that fairway and we have been working around 6 fairway Sabot to clear trees back off the cartpath and get more sun on that fairway. Our tree work is ongoing and once again going to make a nice impact on conditions this season. For reference here are the steps we go through when looking at trees through both courses:   ·          Does the tree pose an immediate or potential safety risk from poor health or condition? ·          Is the tree...