Happy Thanksgiving! See You in December!

 The first signs of winter weather hit us earlier in the week. We’re still over a month away from the winter solstice, when winter officially begins, but it certainly felt like it had arrived. The cold weather settled in a bit earlier than expected, and while we didn’t break any historic low temperatures, it sure didn’t feel that way for anyone out on the golf courses. Looking at the forecast, we still have plenty of time to enjoy some good golf weather before Thanksgiving. Nevertheless, things are cooling down here at Hermitage Country Club. 

With the cold weather that decided to sit over us Tuesday morning, we opted to keep a handful of guys around the shop to tidy up a few things. We were able to pressure wash two of the equipment storage facilities that had accumulated plenty of dust over the years. We also added a fresh coat of paint to a couple of adjacent walls and made good use of our Hermitage stencil as well. Keeping these areas clean helps maintain a more professional appearance around our agronomy facilities.

Before the arctic blast rolled through, we were able to continue spraying our winter pre-emergent in the areas we didn’t get to last week. As mentioned in last week’s post, we had to treat most of our rough areas. This application tied into last weeks spray around the greens, ensuring full coverage across the courses. The winter pre-emergent process always seems to be a bit of a challenge battling leaves, frost, and daily golf play, but we were able to get the rough application finished up and watered in. Next week, we’ll bring out the tractor sprayers to treat the remaining short grass areas, which will wrap up our winter pre-emergent program in full. Any weed breakthrough after this application will be cleaned up with a selective herbicide. 

Having to press pause on our spray Tuesday also meant putting a hold on leaf removal in the rough areas across both courses. Battling 15 mph sustained winds with gusts up to 30 mph made blowing or raking leaves nearly impossible. We decided to “quit while we were ahead,” save a little money on fuel for the day, and redirect a few crew members into the pine beds to clean up the accumulating pine cones. Fighting the leaves through a couple of small gusts in one thing, but a day full of hard winds just becomes a losing battle. 

With most of the harsh winds gone, it was game on to get everyone back out to tackle the necessary evil of leaf removal. We sent out a handful of guys with small backpack blowers to clean up around the tee and green complexes, while the larger turbine and tractor blowers handled the fairway areas. All of this cleanup was done ahead of the sprayer to ensure a uniform application in the rough rather than spraying on top of thousands of leaves.

As the bermudagrass on both courses continues to enter dormancy, we took some time to pull a few late-season runners that decided they wanted to hang around. It’s a slow and labor intensive process, but a necessary one to keep our bunker edges looking crisp as the warm season turf continues its way into dormancy.

Rosa and Angela continue their daily battle with leaves as well. As the trees keep shedding, they come in each day to get everything piled up, once everything is piled up, we bring out our leaf vacuum to remove them from the property. This is one of our newer pieces of equipment, and one we can’t use enough this time of year. The debris vacuum can either sweep up material or use the side nozzle attachment to collect any type of debris. It’s an excellent tool, especially for working between the tree roughs on both courses, since it allows us to clean without repeatedly driving over the mostly dormant turf.

The warm-season turf continues to lose color as we move deeper into November. While overnight lows are getting colder, the daytime highs still look great for enjoying both courses before winter temperatures settle in for the long term. Next week, we’ll wrap up the last of our winter pre-emergent applications, and the following week we’re looking forward to the annual Turkey Trot run on the Manakin course.

This will be the final blog post for November, so look out for the next post the first week of December. Have a great weekend and a wonderful Thanksgiving!