Manakin aeration complete

 

The rain tried to slow us down a little Monday morning but our double aeration was completed easily by Tuesday afternoon. In front of the aeration pictured above we pulled small 1/4" cores out of the greens and blew off the debris. A heavy dose of sand followed and then 1/2" solid tines opened up more holes for the sand to fall in to. This mixture of different methods allows for a little less disruption while still removing organic matter and getting a large amount of sand introduced into the profile.

The past few springs we saw about 25 tons of sand go in to the greens but this year we wanted to get back to something more aggressive. Close to 70 tons of sand was put on the greens this week to ensure every hole was filled to the top. More holes and more sand should lead to a drier, firmer and more consistent surface this season.

The greens have been rolled a few times, including with the asphalt roller. We are looking forward to some rain this afternoon to wash some more sand in. The first dry cut will happen on Monday afternoon so look forward to these greens slowing down as they start growing again this weekend.

While the Manakin team was aerating the Sabot guys were pouring more permeable concrete in the bunkers on 11 and 13. 4 trucks or 36 cubic yards of concrete were laid each morning on Monday and Tuesday.

The white bunker sand started coming from the shop early on Tuesday and filling up the bunkers on 11. It takes about 23 tons to cover 1,000 square feet and there is almost 9,000 square feet of bunkers just on 11. You now have $41,000 more worth of drainage and bunker sand on 11!

The new drainage and concrete are not going anywhere for a long time however. As the sand gets dirty we can pull some off the top and replace with new bunker sand. We will start digging on 14 and 16 next week.

With the excavator on a small break from bunkers and the pump on 5 Sabot stream needing to be pulled out, we moved the machine over here to the left of 6 to clean up this "in play" creek. A new drain box was installed at the edge of the native area and then a french drain now runs into the larger existing basin.

All sodded and looking better than it should. We will let this sod grow up a bit into native grass but finding your snap hook should be much easier here on 6.

Please remember, broken and or still good tees being tossed at the tee marker is unwarranted! Broken tees are trash and should be put in your pocket, your cart or a trash can. No, we will not be putting out little broken tee bins. They detract from the aesthetics of the course, hinder maintenance and are just unnecessary. 

You can see some bermuda greening up on both courses. You will also see the green up happening in rectangles in some areas. As we talked about before, just applying our post emergent Poa annua control in certain areas will alter the timing of the bermuda green up. Anywhere you see dead poa will probably be two weeks behind greener areas for the next month.

We finished Thursday off with the worst hour of the year, unloading 1,540 pine straw bales from a tractor trailer from Florida. Our team is always up for the challenge!