Fall has come quickly, with the trees changing and providing a spectacular multicolored background to the property. Barring the start of leaf clean-up it has been pretty quiet on the maintenance front around the course.
The much wanted rain finally came, albeit about four weeks late; Superintendents are never happy! This USGA article was a nice reminder that I'm not alone complaining about the weather. The rain totals for last week were 1.25" on Monday and 3.67" on Thursday/Friday.
The course held up very well to the storm and the only real issue was the bunkers washing out. We had the entire crew come in on Saturday and spent the day fixing them. By the end of the day all of them had been fixed with only a few holes being left to be raked, which were finished up on Sunday.
13 Saturday Morning
When the bunkers wash out they require quite a bit of work to repair them. Before any work can be done they are pumped out. Once the water is removed the silt is scraped off the surface and either removed or placed back onto the washed out floor. Then the sand is pushed back into place with the Sandpro. In the case of the bunkers that were rebuilt with fabric liners a few years ago, the sand is shoveled up and put back. Although it was a prolonged rain event, it was relatively light so the washouts were not nearly as bad as some previous storms. Even considering that, as a result of the two storms last week approximately 120 hours of labor was needed to repair the bunkers.
Washouts on 15 on Saturday
John removing the silt on 18
Placing the washout sand back on the faces
Regrading the sand
18 greenside bunker repaired
Putting the final touches to 7 fairway bunker
The greens are looking better but are still thin. I had waited on sodding 10 as the seed popped around October 1st. Since the green was so thin it was difficult to know where to stop sodding; once the seed popped it greatly reduced the amount of sod needed. The temperatures are starting to drop so turf growth is slowing down. As such, the seed will not fill in much more this year. Since it has popped and established well it will help the surfaces fill in come the spring. The plan is to keep pushing as much recovery as possible for the rest of the growing season, knowing that the greens will be perfect again all next season.
I know I've mentioned it numerous times about how frustrating it has been for the last month or so when my hands were tied on what to do. I had to be wary of everything that I would normally do to push growth so as not to do more damage. At least the greens have been playing well and putting true, fast and smooth so all was not lost. The plan over the next few months is to research the best solution so that the next time a perfect storm of events occurs we will be better prepared to recover quickly from it.
Last week I noticed that the irrigation pond seemed over full. I noticed that some old dried out algae had blocked the overflow. I took the boat out to clean it and within a few minutes the boat was resting on the outlet. I thought it strange that the pond had drained that quickly until I got it back ashore and realized that the suction had pulled the boat onto the outlet. The picture below of the water bending into the pipe was pretty neat.
As always if you have any questions please email alan@ledgerockgolf.com
