Glen Eagle Maintenance (3/31/23)

 Golf Maintenance

Our drought continues with less than 1” of rain for the year as we close out March. By comparison, last year during the same period we had 2.8” of rainfall.

Overall the course conditions are good but the lack of rain has caused our dry or hot spots to expand as evident in the pictures below.

Common Grounds

Our flower continue to mature and provide additional color to the front entrance and areas around the course.

Facilities

Mostly some routine maintenance right now. Replacing broken switches, replacing cut screens, pressure washing, etc.

I look forward to seeing everyone on the course or in the facilities, and as always, if you have any questions, flag me down or shoot me an email. I always enjoy talking turf and facilities too!

Glen Eagle Maintenance Update (3/24/23)

I am out of town and could not put together an update this week, please check back next week for more maintenance updates.

Maintenance Update (3/17/23)

Golf Course

Somehow we missed a significant chance of rain earlier this week. The front that brought a bit of cooler weather was predicted to give us an inch of rain but it never happened. I had my hopes up mainly because I know how close we are to being in excellent condition. The only thing lacking is periodic rain events (no matter how small) that will reduce the number of hot spots we are currently seeing on the course.

No matter how much we water, the efficiency of irrigation will never match that of rainfall. Going long periods without rain causes areas of soil to “seal off”. Sealing off is what happens to soil as negative inputs like salts and bicarbonates are added to the soil thru irrigation. These elements occur naturally in our irrigation water and are then spread onto the soil during irrigation cycles. The result are areas of hydrophobic/sealed soils where water runs off causing turf to wilt or what we “hot spots”. Rains, especially heavy rains clean the soil of sealing elements allowing the soil to soak up water again.

All-in-all, the course is still in great shape and it looks like we may have an opportunity for some much needed rain very soon.

Common Grounds

New summer annuals called Vinca were planted this week in place the winter annuals called Impations. We removed the Impations a little earlier than normal for a couple reasons. One, it has been hot and Impations are not very tolerant of the heat and second, they had grown so tall that I feared they would get so “leggy” that they would simply fall in on themselves which would look very bad. It will take a couple weeks for the Vinca to grow up but once they do they should be very colorful and healthy throughout the summer.

Facilities

The big project this week was to have the fire and smoke walls repaired in the Resturant, Activities, and Fitness buildings. As you can see from the pictures the crew from Wall Systems throulgly went thru these buildings and filed in all voids both large and small.

Amongst other things this week, Hector worked on adding weather protection to the electronic bulletin board near the Pro Shop

I look forward to seeing everyone on the course or in the facilities, and as always, if you have any questions, flag me down or shoot me an email. I always enjoy talking turf and facilities too!

Glen Eagle Maintenance Updates (3/10/23)

 Golf Course

I am happy to announce that we have promoted Gustavo Rubio as our new Assistant Golf Course Superintendent.

Gustavo started working at Glen Eagle in November 2004 as our Irrigation Technician and expressed an interest in furthering his golf course maintenance career. His extensive knowledge of the Glen Eagle property, the maintenance staff and irrigation systems will be extremely helpful to the success of our maintenance department.

If you see Gustavo, please congratulate, and wish him well in his new role at Glen Eagle.

We are in the dry season but this one has been one for the record books. Excessively hot and exceptionally dry for this time of year, and the course is starting to show it. Almost everywhere you turn there are dry spots popping up. We have only had 0.75” this year and until the 0.07” we had on Wednesday, we hadn’t had any rain since January 26th (40 days). As you can see in the picture below, we are watering hot spots on a daily basis but are having to do so sparingly so that we don’t use up what water remains in the lakes (our main source of irrigation water).

Even without the rain, the course was in great shape for the Talon and Ladies Invitational. Here are a few pictures I captured from the course over the past week.

Facilities

Amongst the small, daily maintenance that is performed, this week a much larger task was accomplished. Repairing the electrical feed to the restaurant. FPL came out to shutdown power to the clubhouse facilities which allowed our electrician to diagnose and repair the incoming power wires.

Once the electrician was able to open the electrical panel, he determined the issue while serious, was not a hard fix. He was able to replace an electrical fitting and get us back up and running within an hour and fifteen minutes, just in time for lunch to be served.

It always amazes me the size and amount of wires that hide behind panels in these electrical systems.

I look forward to seeing everyone on the course or in the facilities, and as always, if you have any questions, flag me down or shoot me an email. I always enjoy talking turf and facilities too!

Maintenance Updates (3/3/23)

 

Golf Course

It’s great to see everyone out enjoying the golf course. Don tells me we had 311 players on the tee sheet last Thursday. I don’t know if that’s a record, but seems higher than I remember in years past. All-in-all, the golf course is in good shape especially considering we recorded no rain for all of February. 

While I was out checking the course this week I noticed something on #10 that explains some of our tight turf conditions this time of year.

In the pictures below, you can see how thick and green the turf is around the drain. Carts avoid the drain which reduces the compaction allowing the turf to grow up to our 1.5” height of cut. In comparison, the rough were carts exit the path and head toward the fairway is much tighter and lower than 1.5”.

These conditions are normal for the amount of play we get and the slower growth of the turf this time of year. However, I do get questions asking why we mow our turf so low when in reality, no matter what height we mow at, the limiting factor will be the amount of traffic present over any given amount of time.

Facilities

The bocce courts had a similar issue to the golf course - compaction. Due to the amount of play the courts have had, they clay became compact. Surface material was added and from the majority of comments I have heard they are playing much better. 

Hector’s been up to many things as usual.

Adding lock boxes for A/C controllers

Painting clean outs so they blend in to the landscape

Replacing leaking electrical outlet covers to prevent tripping during rain and/or irrigation events

Replacing the flag light at the front entrance

Resetting the fire pit safety switch

Pressure washing sidewalks

Replacing the clock in divot that wouldn’t keep time

Hanging more pictures at the Divot

Painting smokers stations for the Pro Shop and Bocce Courts

Patching asphalt at Radio Road Entrance 

I look forward to seeing everyone on the course or in the facilities, and as always, if you have any questions, flag me down or shoot me an email. I always enjoy talking turf and facilities too!