On The Course May 31st

If you haven't been in the native area to the right of #7 our herbicide is working on keeping it pretty thin.

We have had a little more rain overnight and will remain cart path only today. We are mowing greens and approaches. Sheldon is mowing the rough on the Executive 9. We are spraying tees this morning with fertilizer and fungicide. We have also added a wetting agent to help get some infiltration of the rain water. There were a couple of asphalt patches done on the drive into the club yesterday. Next week, if the weather is nice, we will be crack sealing the parking lot areas.

We have seen a very wet May (almost a record) and I would hope we are in the trend that June will be a lot drier and we will be able to get a lot of golf played. We are hosting the Minnesota Superintendents Association on Monday, June 3rd. Superintendents, crew and people from the industry will be playing in our association's Research Scramble. We will have Monday outings for pretty much the rest of the season.

We had a couple of asphalt patches completed in the main drive yesterday. Crack sealing will be done next week.

 We have been working on some native areas with a product that eliminates some of the stubborn grassy weeds. We will be mowing a couple of these areas again and doing the follow up application in a couple weeks. If you have been in the native areas to the right of #7 you may have noticed it is a little thinner than in years past. We are going to try to make this area more fescue dominated and keep it playable. You might be able to find your ball and actually get a club on it. Walking the area yesterday I did notice a few divots here and there.

Reed Canary Grass sprayed with Sethoxydim herbicide. Treated on left and non treated on right

On The Course May 30th

Sand/Seed containers for divots on the Par 3 Tees.

We are mowing greens this morning after some showers overnight. We received 0.5 inches of rain overnight and the course has a few puddles. We are hoping the wind keeps blowing and no more storms pop up today. We will try to mow fairways later this afternoon if they dry out enough. Jorge and Tiburcio are mowing collars and approaches. We are going to be working on some detail work later this morning string trimming trees and push mowing areas of the rough that we can't mow with the larger rough mowers.

On The Course May 29th

Corey Heasley fertilizing the driving range tee

 We have not received a lot of rain in the last couple of days and there are signs of the course beginning to dry out. We are rolling greens this morning and mowing bunker banks. The staff is working hard catching up with mowing and small projects. We were able to get some areas of 18 fairway patched with sod from the nursery. Fernando will continue to work on some of those areas later this morning. We will be seeding some more areas of the fairways later this week if the weather allows. The range tees has been fertilized this morning and we will be hitting from the mats today. We will be back on the turf portion of the tee later this week.

Troy and Corey were able to get some weeds sprayed yesterday as well as the Championship Greens. We have had only a couple small windows to get some spraying done but we are catching up really quickly. We should have a little sunshine today with some thunderstorms popping up in the area later this afternoon.

Bill Ruone is attempting to get the Intermediate rough under control

On The Course May 25th

Corey Heasley (Second Assistant Superintendent) walk mowing #8 green

 We received 0.32 inches of rain overnight to end the streak of 2 consecutive days with sunshine. We will be rolling greens this morning and setting the course for the Men's Memorial Shotgun Event. Sheldon came in this morning to continue trying to catch up on rough but all the spots that were almost dry yesterday are full of rain water again this morning. We will remain cart path only today with the rain but will allow Blue flags off the path if necessary.

We had a cookout for the staff yesterday to thank them for all of the hard work despite the wet conditions. Jorge grilled some Carne Asada for the staff and most of us over served ourselves. After the cookout we where able to sneak out and get the last few fairways that needed to be mowed. It is nice to wait until the leaf surface has dried and get a good clean cut on the fairways. Most of the rain has moved through the area and I would expect conditions to remain cloudy with no rain during the Men's Event.

On The Course May 23rd

Fernando rolling the Chipping Green

The sun is out and we have a slight breeze out of the North! We should getting some pretty good drying weather today and are hopeful to get a lot of work done. The crew is out rolling greens and raking bunkers. Corey Heasley will be changing pin locations today and Troy is working on pumping out more puddles. We are going to look at mowing greens this afternoon after they have dried out a little more and might even get a fairway or two mowed. There are still a lot of puddles and wet areas in the fairways but we will work around what we can.

There are a lot of clippings in the rough and we will be working on cleaning those up today and tomorrow. Sheldon is tip toeing around with the large rough mower and we will be mowing rough around greens later today. It does not appear we have any rain in the forecast until Sunday Night. We will be spraying greens tomorrow morning adding some fertilizer to some of the weak areas and a preventative fungicide to all the greens.

On The Course May 22nd

Bill Ruone mowing #12 green yesterday

 We only received 0.30 inches of rain in the past 24 hours. The course might start to dry out a little with the wind picking up later today and sunshine in the forecast for tomorrow. Today we are mowing greens and bunker banks. Troy and I are going to try get some rough mowed around the greens and work on some high areas of the golf course. Rubiel is going to sand pro the bunker and try to get some of the sand to dry out.

We will remain on the mats on the range tee and will be cart path only. Most of the projects we have had scheduled this week are going to be delayed but we will attempt to get after some of them next week. We are still looking at building the Green Tees on #3 and #18 as soon as we can and hope to have them open for play later this summer.

Clippings being dumped in the back of a cart

There is a lot of growth on the greens this week.

On The Course May 20th

Bunkers washed out from 1.25" of rain in less than 1 hour last night.

 We are in a rainy stretch of weather and the course is saturated. We have had over 3 inches of rain in the past couple of days. The weather station shows 1.25 inches from 5pm to 6pm last night May 19th. The crew is out working on fixing bunker and getting the greens blown off. We will not be able to mow greens today with the wet conditions. Hopefully the sun and wind help dry everything out so we can get some turf mowed. The rough is really growing well and filling in fast. We still have some areas of the fairways that need some attention but they are also the low areas of the fairways that are holding most of the water.

Sod patch on #11 fairway by the bunkers

Troy and Sheldon have the trash pumps running this morning moving water

New sand/seed container on the Par 3 holes. Please fill divots and level with foot.

On The Course May 19th

We were able to get 1, 2, 5,7,8 and 9 greens mowed this morning before the rain. Pin locations were also changed on those greens but the rain and lightning has put us back in the shop for a little while. Javier, Gustavo and Jose were able to get almost all of the tee markers moved in record time this morning. We will not be able to finish mowing greens today with another 0.50 inches of rain. The greens will be check in a couple hours to determine what we will be able to do today. With some light rain building behind the front line it does not look good.

The greens are growing well and have filled in from aerification. We will be working getting greens speeds back to normal. This coming week we will try to get fairway aerification done as well as tees and Executive Greens. We are scheduled for some fertilizer and fungicide applications this week and will also continue spraying weeds.

On The Course May 18th

We have a strong line of thunderstorms moving into the areas this morning with a good "light show". Depending on the amount of rain and how fast the system moves through we will have a late start this morning. There is another wave setting up later this afternoon and it appears we could be in for more over the next couple of days.

If we don't get substantial rain we will be mowing greens and changing pin locations this morning. We have had 0.34 inches of rain in the past 24 hours. Next week we will be aerifying the Executive course greens as well as finishing the aerification process on the fairways. Mary Pat was able to get some of the annuals planted in the front of the clubhouse and should finish planting next week.

On The Course May 16th

Interesting spot on #3 where the divot was seeded last fall and survived the winter

 We have had a busy week so far getting some projects done and working on fairway aerification. Our aerification process on the fairways consist of using the Weidenmann Super 500 flail mower to lightly verticut/scarify the surface. We are also pulling 3/4" hollow cores in some of the ice damaged areas of the fairway. We have completed #1, 2 and 18. We will be working on #3 and #9 this morning. The cored areas will be hand topdressed with sand and seed. We will be working on the rest of the fairways into next week and should have them all done by the end of next week.

Troy has been working on the irrigation system and has most of the major problems fixed and we are going to start to work on checking nozzles and sprinkler drives to make sure everything is operating correctly. We will be charging up the second irrigation motor later today and should have the system at full capacity later this week.

Next week we will be working on tee aerification and finishing up the fairway aerification process. We will continue to seed and sod areas of the fairways as well as apply some additional fertilizer. Our plan is to keep using triplex greens mowers on the greens until late next week and then we will switch over to the walk mowers for the remainder of the season. By using the triplex mowers it helps us allocate some labor to other tasks on the golf course at this time in the season.

Part of #18 fairway was aerified and seeded yesterday

Fernando, Javier, Rubiel and Tiburcio working on a bentgrass sod patch around # 6 fairway bunker



We have been out spraying weeds in native areas as well as bunker banks

On The Course May14th

Fernando Solid Tining #9 Green

 Greens aerification went very well yesterday despite the light rain showers. The crew did a great job of staying on task and getting everything done. The greens were verticut, topdressed lightly and then solid tined with 8mm tines. The aerifiers help drag most of the sand into the turf canopy. Troy fertilized the greens and then watered the sand and fertilizer into the canopy. After the greens were able to dry a little bit we rolled them and they are looking very good this morning. We will be adding another light topdressing to them later this week or early next week.

We will be starting fairway aerification today getting all of the equipment set up and converted over from the greens set up. With the forecasted temperatures to be in the low 90's we will probably only get a couple fairways done today but will have a couple long days Wednesday and Thursday. We are starting to see a lot of growth in the ice damaged areas of the fairways and the aerification will only help open some channels for new plants to emerge. We will be seeding and sodding some more areas of the fairways later this week.

The broad leaf weeds are starting to emerge and we were able to get some areas of the course sprayed yesterday and will continue the rest of this week as weather allows. Troy has been working hard on getting the irrigation system up and running. We have had several steel pipe leaks and some valve leaks. We are getting close to getting everything fixed and should have the system dialed in by the end of the week. 

Surface disruption was minimal with this aerification process

Bill Ruone verticutting #15 Green

Close up of the verticut process with debris left on the green

Sod Patch on #15 fairway

On The Course May 12th

Aerification starts next week!

Frost this morning on the course with a temperature of 30 degrees. We will be delayed a little bit but will get everyone out on the course as soon as possible. We are going to be mowing greens, changing pin locations and raking green side bunkers.

We will be aerifying greens on Monday and will jump right into fairways. On the greens we are going to be verticutting, lightly topdressing and needle tining with a 8mm solid tine. Our recovery should be very rapid and the light coat of topdressing will help smooth and true the putting surfaces. We have sodded an area on 15 fairway and will continue to do several other areas later this week. Fairway aerification will be a mixed bag of flail mowing, solid tine and coring tines. Some fairways need more work than others and we want to get as much done this week as we can.

Weeds are starting to show up in certain areas of the course and that will also be a big focus for us this week. With a shot at 90 degrees on Tuesday the weeds will be growing in full force and be very receptive for some herbicide.

On The Course May 7th

Fernando, Rubiel and Emmanuel working on # 9 bunker

 The course has taken some great strides over the past couple of days and will continue to get better. The crew has been working hard on getting some of the detail work done around the course and playing conditions will continue to get better. The course has firmed up enough that we will allow carts off of the path later this week. We wanted to let the damaged areas of the fairways get a little jump before we let cart traffic on them. Please avoid the ice damaged areas of the fairways with cart traffic whenever possible. We will be roping and staking off areas of the fairways to help direct traffic.

We were able to get some spraying done today on greens and fairways. We sprayed a little fertilizer on them to help with growth and get the fine turf areas ready for aerification next week. We are still analyzing the fairways to determine the best aerification practices to employ next week. The greens will be verticut, topdressed and solid tined with 8mm needle tines. We used this same process a couple years ago with great success. Disruption should be minimal and the greens will heal very quickly.

Troy spraying some fertilizer on the championship course greens

 We have several areas of the fairways that have been damaged from the winter. The turf is starting to grow and we are seeing a lot of plants growing in certain areas. There are several areas that will need a little more attention that the rest and we will be working on some of these later this week and into next week.

We will continue to get areas of the golf course mowed and cleaned up. The greens were mowed today and will be rolled tomorrow. We will start getting into our normal mowing schedule later this week and will make some adjustments with aerification next week. Troy and Brandon were working on getting the irrigation system charged up with only a couple leaks so far. We had a broken swing joint on #17 rough between the tees and green, a pin hole leak in the steel pipe on #5 fairway and a broken pipe in #3 approach. We will continue to get the system up and running and fix any of the major problems we come across. When we aerify and seed some of the fairway areas we need to make sure the system is running and most of the winter problems are fixed.

We will be making more progress reports on the golf course this week and work back into a regular schedule for blog updates. Please feel free to email or call me with any questions about the golf course.

#12 Fairway ice damage!

On The Course May 3rd

Gabriel and Fernando happy about the sunny day last Saturday. They are not as happy today with 30 degree temperatures.

 The golf course is open but we are again in a cold snap with a potential of a winter mix of snow and rain later today. Hopefully it stays to the East of the golf course. The crew has been really busy getting the gold course cleaned up and playable. Overall we are pretty happy with the way the course has wintered and look forward to a great golf season. We need some warm temperatures to get the turfgrass growing and be able to get some work done on the golf course.

Brandon was cleaning out main line valves yesterday and was still finding some of them to be frozen. We will be charging the irrigation system next week in preparation of doing some fertilizing and seeding. There are some ice damage areas of the fairways that we will be seeding and a couple areas we will be sodding. We have lost almost 4 weeks of project time and golf course preparation time with the late snow storms. We will be working hard the next couple of weeks to catch up and complete some of the normal spring tasks.

We have mowed most of the fine turf areas of the golf course at least one time. The rough is still pretty slow to come out of winter dormancy and Sheldon is itching to get back on the rough mower. Yesterday, we placed some evergreen growth covers on a section of 18 fairway to help promote growth and recovery from some ice damage. We will be aerifying and seeding this area next week. The turf part of the range tee is progressing nicely and we should be able to open the turf part of the tee late next week. We will continue to hit off of the mats until then.

JD has a very nice new ball mark repair tool in the Pro Shop that is a must have for everyone. I will be working on posting a video of how I like to repair ball marks and some different techniques to make sure they are repaired properly. A ball mark repaired right away and correctly will leave no blemish to the green. A ball mark left unattended takes a long time to heal.

Sheldon Pigeon mowing greens for the first time this season.

Drainage holes that were drilled last fall definitely helped get us through the winter

18 Green wintered very well.