Glen Eagle Maintenance (9/27/24)

The big news this week has been Hurricane Helene…

We missed the majority of the storm but have recorded 3.45” of rain and a maximum wind gust of 49 mph.

Prior to storms like Helene we send crews out to check as many of the community drains as possible. They remove debris and generally make sure the drains are ready for the storm.

You can see in the second picture that the water level is well below the top of the drain and ready to take on the oncoming rainfall.

On Wednesday we had some unexpected help. MRI, the company who is cleaning our lake interconnects happened to be out working on the project. I call that perfect timing.

I did get one report of a tree down on #9 tee. Hopefully this will be the extend of the damage to GE. We will get it cleaned up as quickly as possible on Friday.

Enough of storm talk, I’ll leave you with a couple pictures I took earlier this week, before the storm passed by.

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

Glen Eagle Maintenance (9/20/24)

Is it the sun or is it the moon? If you guessed moon, you would be correct. The early morning skies have been illuminated by the very bright full moon this week.

With our major maintenance behind us for the year, the course is recuperating very nicely. We can start switching gears to prepare for the upcoming traffic during the upcoming season.

We performed the DryJect on Monday and all went well. It was very labor intensive but the sand channels should be well worth it. The greens were a bit bumpy for a couple days but improving every day. I am very interested to see how this application helps us over the upcoming season.

Here is a video of the process…

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

Glen Eagle Maintenance (9/12/24)

Well this week feels a little weird. With the last course closure behind us, our brain tells us that fall is coming but with temperatures in the 90s, it sure doesn’t feel like it.

We are still working on getting the course healed up from the work we did last week. As you will see in the pictures below, there is still a lot of evidence (sand/beat up areas) of the work we did. Overall the course is in good shape and these areas will heal over the next couple of weeks. We begin will focus on getting detail work done as the end of summer gets closer.

I want to mention a new process we are adding to the maintenance program this year called DryJect.

In its simplest form, DryJect is a machine that blasts a column in the soil profile and uses a vortex to draw or inject sand into the column. This process will inject 11 tons of sand into the greens per acre. The sand will firm up the greens, dilute organic matter, and allow water/gas exchange. The best thing is it will happen with very little surface disruption. This will allow us to have the greens ready for play the day after the injection. I am looking forward to this process and believe it will be another tool in our toolbox to sustain the best greens conditions possible for years to come.

Here are a couple pictures and videos of the DryJect process and results.

https://youtu.be/RRs2xWSkb_w

https://youtu.be/tnY25bW5Plk

More videos and pictures of how the process worked in next week’s post.

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

Glen Eagle Maintenance (9/6/24)

It’s been a bit of a struggle to be efficient and productive this week due to the rain. For 8 days straight we have had rain, accumulating 5.8 inches. Adding to the interruption, most of the rain has come between 12 and 1:30pm, forcing us to come in off the course.

As you would expect with that much rain, the course has many wet areas that we are doing our best to work around. We are still on track to complete all of our critical tasks (greens aerification, etc.) I just keep trying to remind myself, that come April/May I will be complaining that we aren’t getting rain 😂. 

We finished August wet but generally on track with other years at 11.11” of rain. Year-to-date that brings us to 58.16”, which according to the news is Naples’s 2nd wettest on record.

Here are some of the tasks we have been working on this week…

Greens Aerificaiton (1/2” core tines)

Core Cleanup

Topdressing

Molasses Application

(Molasses is used as an inexpensive food (sugar) for soil microbes that break down nutrients and thatch)

Greens aerificaiton gets all glory so not pictured is core aerificaiton of tees and wall-to-wall core aerification.

We also tackled a needed project by raising two drainage catch basins, one on #3 and one on #14.

As organic material accumulates and we topdress the fairways the soil level rises so the irrigation and drainage appears to sink. Over several years, the soil has elevated enought that the heads/drains have to be raised. Raising the drains will reduce the potential for cart accidents and mowing issues due to the steep slope around the existing drains.

Now that the turf is back in place, we will tamp it down and topdress the seams to finish the project. In a month or two, it will look like the drain has always been at that level.

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