Spring has Sprung

Middle of March and soil temperatures at the surface 1" are over 50 degrees. This is very early, but we'll have to wait and see if it lasts. Currently the grounds staff has a total of 4 employees to maintain the course and we have already mowed greens 3 x's, fairways once and tees once.

Course clean-up has begun, but due to the high winds there are many limbs and too much debris for a crew of 4 to maintain the golf course. We are scheduled to have 4 more employees begin on April 2nd.

You may often question why we cut a specific tree down? One reason is sunlight and air movement to fine turf areas. It is not possible to grow high quality turf in shaded areas. We begin thinning areas, which have trees to the South and East of greens. Notice the gap we created to the right side of the photo.

Since the golf course was overplanted, when 1 tree becomes infected with a disease or insects other trees surrounding it will also be damaged. There were 5 trees next to 3 ladies tee that became infested by insects and all had to be removed.

This past winter we removed 47 very large trees, cleared brush on #13, cleaned storm damage from last April, thinned material behind #14 green and the stumps have not been addressed.

Stump grinding is a very tedious demanding job, which requires a fair amount of labor. Beginning in the winter of last year we have had difficulty renting the large stump grinder in the picture above. The stump grinder costs $1300/week to rent, but rental companies no longer rent large grinders. The grinder we will have to rent this spring is very small for the job, but will have to do. Stump grinding will begin after the course has been cleaned from debris in the middle of April.

We will continue to work as hard as we can to get the golf course in the best possible conditon for the 2012 season. In the upcoming weeks we will be putting out golf course accessories, course clean-up, stump grinding, mulching of beds & preparing for aerification.