Nursery Update

I blogged back in July about the new bentgrass nursery that we seeded this summer.  It is close to about 3,000 square feet and was seeded to Alpha bentgrass, a newer variety that we used to sod and seed our new tees with this spring.

Although I have to admit that tending to our nursery fell pretty low on the priority list this summer, we did manage to get a pretty good stand of grass established by this fall.  At this point, I am cautiously optimistic that we will be able to harvest that turf first thing in the spring for a variety of uses.

Most importantly, as soon as we are finished doing the final seeding on our new tees in the spring, we will be able to sod a small pad in the middle of the teebox that will be available for immediate use while the rest of the seed is growing in.  What this means is that the use of temporary tee boxes should be very limited this coming spring.

Secondly, with whatever is left, we will be sodding out any of the dead collars around the greens.  Unfortunately, after 3 years in ND, I can honestly say that there will probably never be a "perfect" winter where at least some of the Poa Annua that so heavily infests our collars will not be dead.  Every spring thus far we have aggressively slit seeded bentgrass into some of these dead areas, but it has been an agonizingly slow wait for the bentgrass seed to germinate and the Poa to slowly fill its self back in around the collars.  Having an immediate stash of sod to use to instantly fix the worst of the dead areas will be really helpful.

3,000 sq ft of pure Alpha bliss ready to find a new home out on the golf course this coming spring!

If all goes well we should have all of this harvested and utilized out on the golf course by the end of May.  And then we get to rebuilt it and start over!  Next time, I am hoping to expand our bentgrass nursery to closer to 5,000 sq. ft. as well as seed another 10,000 sq. ft. to a newer blend of low mow bluegrass for use in our fairways.  It seems like a guy can never have too much sod on hand just in case....