Greening up, bunker renovations complete!

 

The weather decided to cooperate this week so we have been able to finish our 103rd and final bunker here on 16 Manakin. We picked up some sod and wrapped the bunker on Monday.

The concrete showed up Wednesday and 5 yards was the perfect amount to finish this bunker off. Most of these guys have been here for the past 5 years of bunker work. This is the last concrete they should see for a while which was a welcome comment after 75 trucks and close to 700 yards of concrete laid.

All smoothed out and ready for sand. Having 36 holes and over 100,000 square feet of bunkers be bulletproof against heavy storms and washing out is a massive benefit for our golfing membership. This is something that is easily forgotten about when 5 inches of rain comes down on a Friday night and the bunkers are playable for Saturday. The infrastructure is there now and will forever be appreciated by our team.

The smaller bunker will give much better access to the green here on 16. The sand is in and tamped down. We will have a small walkway set up to get across the sod for the weekend just in case your ball ends up in the sand instead of on the green. Please play the sod as ground under repair for the next two weeks or so.

On Tuesday next week a company will begin dredging about two feet of muck out of the pond here on 16. As is told by the blue heron that fishes here all day, there is not much more than 18" of water in this pond currently. The dredged material will be placed up in the native area to the left of the pond and allowed to dry out. You will see a straw bale and silt fence coral there along with our excavator for the next two weeks. As the material dries we will blend it into the native area mound and then sod it over. This will be a sloppy few weeks but the result will be a much healthier and better looking pond!

Even though we just finished putting our 105th truck load of sand (that's about 2,300 TONS) into 16 bunker, the guys have moved on to some "older" bunkers. The top layer of some of these dirtier bunkers is pulled out (and saved for drainage projects) and then new sand is placed in. The depths are checked all through the bunker then the sand is watered and tamped in. The new white sand all around the Manakin especially, is looking great against the greening up bermuda.

And the bermuda is greening up. Many of these shaded areas are making some headway and have improved nicely this week. Luckily the frost was light and spotty today so the 80 degree air temps should get the soil temps moving to the mid-60's this week.

A few collars that were mainly north facing on the Manakin decided they did not want to participate in 2025. They have been sodded out this week save for 7 Sabot collar which will be sodded out next week most likely. Any other questionable areas will be given some time for the soil temps and sun angle to come up. The majority of our turf is tracking ahead of where we were last year despite the colder winter.

We did spray all the short grass this week with a small amount of foliar fertilizer. The color looks great for mid-April!

The Sabot squad tossed in a quick french drain up at pickleball this week to help prevent our mulch from washing out.

The Sabot greens are trying to fill in a bit from aeration. We got a decent mow on them Wednesday when the wind was blowing and no dew was on the surface. The dew will be back for this weekend but we'll try a few things to get the mowers out there in the mornings. 

It is only us dumb humans thinking we can recover bentgrass from aeration and green up bermuda quickly in mid April with mornings in the 30's. These birds are patiently waiting for the sun to come over to their house before they get going on another day of nest building. The temperatures and grass growing will come!