Finally a little rain to start the weekend.  We have a busy week ahead as all greens, tees, and fairways will be aerated.  Greens and fairways will be contracted out to expedite the process.  Play will be available on a limited basis so please check with the pro shop before venturing out.  The driving range will remain open.

It has been a difficult period with wind and tree pollen.  Here oak flowers litter the thirteenth bunker.  Oaks produce both male and female flowers.  The male flowers are called catkins and much larger and when they drop are a royal pain!

Oak catkins on the thirteenth green.  All fine turf areas must be blown before mowing.

Bunker sand was added to some shallow bunkers this week.

Covering sterilized greens sand for aeration.  This sand must be bone dry to spread properly in the DryJect equipment.

Spring Dead Spot disease on the driving range tee.  This disease affects bermudagrass and is difficult to control even with preventive fungicides.

The bermuda is just beginning to grow so it shouldn't be too long before we are able to hit off grass.  The light green turf is perennial ryegrass and the blue is the bermuda just starting to grow.

Cross cutting fairways for the first time this season.

Adding mulch around the old oak trees!

Dead annual bluegrass weevil adults and a successful insecticide application.

Beautiful tulips about to wrap up for the season.

The course continues to be in a very dry state.  This will pass as one of the driest springs in a long time. And what about the wind?  The wind continues to howl and makes one think we are on the coast.  Hopefully we will receive some rain soon as this will help the course heal from next weeks aerification.

All our new tees are now open and ready for play.  No more bending it around the trees on thirteen!

Annual bluegrass weevil monitoring using a soap flush on the fourteenth fairway. The soapy solution is applied to the turf and causes beetles to come out from hiding and are then counted.  The soap doesn't 

hurt the grass.

Annual bluegrass weevil.  All fine turf areas were treated with an insecticide this week.

All fairways are now being mowed with triplex cutting units.  We will be purchasing two mowers soon to allow us to efficiently mow fairways.

We have seen some minor disease on some of our greens.  This is called Waitea Patch and is an almost annual event on our greens.

Annual bluegrass seed head suppression on our greens was pretty successful as demonstrated by this photo.  The perimeters of the greens were not treated as the chemical can be harsh to bent collars.  Not bad control!

New sod installation at the clubs entrance.  The center area with turf was sprayed with Roundup and will be mulched soon.

We have had an excellent display of tulips this spring that is unfortunately about to end.

Tulipmania!

Its Masters week but it feels like winter.  Hopefully this cold spell will be short-lived and we can get back to warmer temperatures.  It would help if the wind would calm down too!  It has also been particularly dry so some beneficial rain would be nice.  Looks like Thursday is the day.

Root pruning of invasive tree roots was recently performed throughout the course.  This helps reduce trees pulling valuable moisture from fairway turf.

Removing growth from around fifteen lake.

Relocating azaleas in the bed by the sixth green to a shadier spot.  Plants more tolerant of a hot southern exposure will be added later.

Replacing weak turf with fresh sod on the fourteenth hole.

Its been snowing flower petals with all the wind we have experienced.

Growth regulators are really pushing the bent through the Poa in our fairways.  This should get even better when the weather warms up.

Whoops!  After planting tulips for over 25 years without a mixup it finally happened. 

Here is the pine with the red tail hawk nest correctly identified by Bob McNamara.

Spring has arrived early and there is plenty going on the golf course.  Anytime we can get a jump working on the course is a bonus in our book and everyone wins!  After the last two winters what a marvelous March.  Heck we were just starting to open the course at this time last year.

All the greens and most of the tees have been deep tine aerated.

These holes are over nine inches deep creating voids for roots to grow.

Soil temperatures are almost three weeks ahead of this time last year.  This was taken on March 8th and current soil readings are now in the low fifties.  Look at the difference in the turf color in one week in the previous photo.

The early warmth has started the migration of annual bluegrass weevils from their overwintering sites to   our fine mowed turf.  This is the adult stage and very difficult to see.   We begin insecticide applications soon to control this damaging pest.

Weak rough areas have been core aerated and seeded with tall fescue.  These areas are filling in rapidly.

Roots are looking superb so far.  Here is a plug from a fairway with nice white roots.  Cool season grasses grow their most extensive roots in the spring.

Thirteen tee has six inch roots!  All the new tees will open sooner than expected if the nice weather keeps up.

Here is a long over due piece of equipment recently purchased and a very happy Richard Purple.  No more manual push and pull rolling again!

Fungicides and growth regulators were applied to fairways and greens this week.

Fairway growth regulators must be watered in.  We did not receive the expected rain last night so fairways were irrigated this morning. 

  

Purple martin houses were put out this week in anticipation of their spring arrival.  We have the good fortune of having red tail hawks nesting on the course in a new nesting site.  Be the first to discover where and respond to this blog or to me in person and receive a dozen Pro V's!

BEST DOG EVER!

Winter's last gasp has occurred and spring has arrived!  The course is so much further along than last winter when we didn't open till March 21st.  This week all of the bunkers were intensely cultivated and the faces compacted and are ready for play.  Next week we begin aeration and seeding of weak rough areas.  The following week we will deep tine aerate the greens and tees.  With the excellent weather we expect lots of golf this week!

The tarps are off and the greens look very healthy.  Once they are acclimated to the  environment

they will open.

Using a tine harrow to lift up matted rough from the snow.  New shoots are rapidly emerging in these areas.  We will begin aeration and seeding this week.

The first mow of the fairways.

Winterberry hollies still showing plenty of fruit in late winter.  These should be gone soon as new seasons growth occurs.

The last snow of winter? 

Friday found us back in the shop wrapping up some final course accessory work.  Here Luis measures and cuts Vinyl Guard for hazard stakes.

Using a heat gun he shrink wraps the vinyl over the pvc.

Voila! The stake is complete.  No more painting and a polished professional look.

Sure signs of spring…

Bee colony #2 survived the winter!  The warm weather last week brought them out of the hive and we started feeding with sugar water.

What a bad storm we experienced this week.  The golf course didn't lose any trees but it sure did lose plenty of mulch.  I don't believe I can remember such a "spring" storm in February.  Anyway we spent two days cleaning up and are ready to open the entire course the first week of March.  We are about three weeks ahead of last season and the long range weather looks good for golf.  Maybe Mr. Groundhog was right about an early spring!

Every bunker was in this condition or worse on Thursday morning.  Rainfall rates around 2 inches per hour were experienced.

Storm damage #5.

Mud and mulch at the 6th green.

More mess by the 3rd green.

Plenty of silt was deposited in all of our ponds.  

More cleanup Saturday morning.

We made temporary greens that were nice to look at but never used this winter!  Turf covers come off on Sunday and mowers and rollers will be on the course next week.

There is still plenty of firewood available for the taking.