Golf Maintenance
Another very hot and dry week. The news is reporting drought indexes in July! Living here my entire life I don’t ever remember that happening. The numbers in the pictures below show the rain deficits this year versus normal year-to-date rainfall. Here at Glen Eagle are 20.46” behind last year in rainfall.. I keep thinking that any day it will start raining and we will be begging for it to stop but we haven’t seen it yet.
The heat and lack of rainfall haven’t slowed us down during the second week of our closure. We have been topdressing tees & fairways.
Finished root pruning the course
And flail mowed the collars
Flail mowing is a process where we use the machine above to “plane” the turf. This picture shows the head of the machine which has flat tips on the blades. As the head spins, the blades take the top off the turf essentially flattening or planing it.
We are performing this flail mowing for two primary reasons. The first is to lower the edge of the collar so that the transition between green and collar doesn’t have a lip. The second is to remove the dams that naturally build up as we topdress greens. When the collar gets higher than the green it dams up the water and holds it on the green. When we think about greens drainage, we generally think about the drain lines that are built into the greens but just as important is the surface drainage that moves excess water off the greens via surface flow designed into the greens. If the collar dams up the surface drainage the greens will stay wetter than we want and wet greens can lead to issues such as excess disease pressure.
Collar prior to flail mowing
Up close view of green/collar interface
Collar after flail mowing
We use vacuums and blowers to remove the excess material that has been cut out and are left with scalped turf.
Up close of then new green/collar interface
Please be patient as it will take a few weeks for the collars to green up and get thick again but when they do they should be great for the next year.
Common Grounds
Paulino and Esther have been working on adding some color in a couple visible spots this week.
Behind #12 green along the road.
It is hard to tell in these pictures due to the shade but adding some color around the palms really pops when you are driving down the road.
More color in front of the clubhouse
Facilities
Hector broke out the paint brush this week and started painting the awnings at the clubhouse. They are being painted the color of the trim on the building and have really turned out nice.
Before
After
Before
After
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!
A quick editors note: I’m on vacation next week so more updates in two weeks.
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