Rain is upon us, and there is nothing better for our golf courses than a good rain. A burst of fresh rain water in the soil releases nutrients and encourages strong plant growth. Although it makes for a bad day of golfing, we are heavily dependant on rain to flush the salts out of our soils each winter.
The South Course closes next week for overseed and greens aerification. We are going to be overseeding tees, green surrounds and primary roughs. Although we want to move in a non-overseeded bermuda direction on the South Course as well, we need to overseed this winter to re-establish a good stand of turf until we can convert the roughs to bermuda. We have decreased the irrigation on the South so that we can lower the roughs to prepare them for seeding. We will also be preparing the tees this week for seed. The new green on #5 has been built, and will be grassed with aerification plugs next week. Once the plugs are installed, we will sod around the outside of the green and get it grown in. I've heard nothing but good comments about the new design, and especially the new pin position tucked behind the bunker!
The range will also close next week for overseeding. The top tee is already seeded and is coming in nicely. We will overseed the lower tees and the range landing while closed. Once re-open, the top tee will be available to provide some turf hitting surface until the lower tees are ready. We will also be aerifying the small putting green and short game practice area (#16), those will remain closed until healed.
The North greens are starting to get back to normal green speeds following aerification, and soon enough we will be getting to the "greens are too fast" point again. We fertilized the entire course on Monday, and continue to aerify and plug the areas in the roughs on a daily basis. We are also starting a program around tees installing a walking path up to each tee and repairing the traffic areas around the tees. We did the first one on #16 last week, and will be doing groups of holes each week until completed. We also installed a new split rail fence around the mulch area on #4 and planted flowering vines on the fence. This area was used as a construction staging area for the project, and should be completely cleaned up by next week.
Finally, we are in the process of overseeding all of our clubhouse lawns right now and changing out the annual color flowers. The new flower beds will be complete by the end of next week.
