A Busy October

Wow, the days are getting short.  The sun isn't coming up until close to 8:00am and it seems that the rays are getting awfully low already on the drive home from work.  The scary part is, we will continue to lose daylight for almost another 2 months....

The last remaining staff on the maintenance department has been extremely busy the last few weeks trying to get as many things done as possible before the ground freezes up and snow starts flying.  Here is a run down of everything that we were able to get done in the month of October:

• Rebuilt 17 tee and extended the blue tee box
• Rebuilt 15 tee, added new black teebox, and build an 80' retaining wall/cart parking area
• Rebuilt 2 tee, moving it to the left about 6 feet
• Rebuilt 8 tee, extended it about 15 feet longer and closer to the hole.
• Build an additional alternate tee box for hole 8
• Fixed the 20 year old mainline irrigation leak by 8 tee
• Poured 170 linear feet (about 60,000 lbs) on concrete cartpath from 7 green to 8 tee
• Rebuilt 3 tee, moving it away form the encroaching creek bank
• Tore out degraded asphalt path from 2 green to 3 tee
• Added new cart turnaround by 3 tee (Still need to find a sponsor for concrete here....)
• Rebuilt the bunker by 8 green, moving it about 10 feet closer to the green and out of the pine trees
• Reshaped the bunker left of 16 green
• Poured 150 liner feet (about 55,000 lbs) of concrete cartpath along 14 tee

Also, the following maintenance tasks were completed:

• The entire golf course, including some rough areas, were fertilized with about 6,500 lbs of fertilizer
• Leaves were blown and mulched across the entire 200 acres
• All of the course accessories have been taken down and brought back to the shop
• The water was blown out of the irrigation system
• The internal electronics in the irrigation controllers were removed and brought into the shop
• All 30 acres of highly maintained turf were sprayed preventatively for snowmold diseases
• The river pump was removed and stored in the shop
• Greens, tees, and fairways were mowed a time or two per week, or however much the slowly growing turf needed to be

Amazingly, all of this was accomplished with a total staff of only 4 people:  Myself, Andy, Jeff, and Mike.  A few of the college staff from the summer were able to come in one or two afternoons a week for a few hours to help with some leaf cleanup. 

Although the cool weather would lead one to believe that we are into a "slow" time of year at the golf course, this couldn't be further from the truth.  My maintenance staff has worked their tails off for the last month making some much needed upgrades to the course, trying to keep the leaves cleanup up and the turf mowed so the golfers can keep playing, but also trying to get all of our necessary items taken care of to ensure the course is prepared to endure a long winter and to make sure we can hit the ground running first thing in the spring.

Andy placing sand on the new teebox for hole 3

Blowing fairways clean in front of our snowmold application

A test plot in one of the fairways to evaluate our snowmold fungicide effectiveness

New cartpath from 2 green to 3 tee

New concrete path along the retaining wall on 14 tee

Reshaping the horribly old and out of play bunker by 8 green

We still have a lot left to get done in the remaining week or two before the ground starts to freeze up:

• Greens and tees will be sprayed one last time for extra protections against snowmold
• Greens and collars will be heavily topdressed with sand to protect against an open winter
• Snow fence will be going up on the back of the greens
• The entire west and north side of the golf course will be roped off, and signs put up in order to keep the snowmobiles from trashing the golf course over the winter
• The flags, cups, and tee markers still need picked up and brought back to the shop
• All of our equipment needs to be thoroughly pressure washed so we can work on it over the winter

I think that's it....hardly a slow time of year indeed.