April 4th: Our 154th Day Of Winter

My mind says that winter starts on November 1st.  Meaning today is the 154th day of winter, since that is still where we are firmly entrenched.  We had a nice balmy day in North Dakota today for this 4th day of April; sunny, light winds, and a daytime high of 29 degrees.  Things are slowly starting to melt, but there is still a long way to go, especially since our 10 day forecast is mostly 30s and maybe a low 40s or two if we're lucky.

Still out blowing snow, lots of puddles of water starting to show up on
the course.  12 tee is buried under a 4' drift right in front of the 4 evergreen
trees on the left side of the picture.

I went out and blew the snow off of the bentgrass nursery today.  We then put covers on it to try and initiate some heat and growth.  One of the worst parts of this late start is how much it is going to set back the completion of the tees that we started rebuilding last fall.  My goal is to get the bentgrass nursery matured ASAP.  We will then use it to sod small hitting pads on the new tees while the rest of the seed is still growing in.  This will hopefully limit the amount that we have to use the temporary tees this spring.

Got the covers on the bentgrass nursery so that it can start growing
into a solid base of turf that we can use as sod in another month.

And the 1 extra cover we have is on 16 green.  If only we had 17 more....

Another turf health update.  Batting 2 for 3 on this
batch.  The top left plug is all Poa, and it is toast.