IRRIGATION AUDIT

Water is a precious resource and we do many things behind the scenes to ensure we apply water to the Golf course in an efficient manner. Primarily making sure we apply just enough water to provide our turf plants is the objective while not over watering maintaining firm playing conditions.

Recently we started a project where we are collecting data that we will process and ultimately determine the efficiency of our turf sprinklers and we will use this data to decide if updating our sprinklers is a cost effective way to decrease ou overall water use while offering an even more consistent playing surface that looks terrific.

The technical description of this process is an Irritation Audit. We will be testing strategic areas and will hopefully come up with some valuable data once the project is completed.

NEW EQUIPMENT

This week we received three new pieces of equipment at Deer Creek.  The most important piece is a new greens mower.  It is a reconditioned 3150 TORO that matches our other greens unit.  We will now be able to prepare all 18 greens in a consistent manner during our shotgun or double tee mornings.  This is an important step in achieving our goal of offering superb consistent putting greens for our Members and Guests at Deer Creek Golf Club. 

The other two pieces are two Club Car Carry All 2 utility carts to replace a few of our old carts that are worn out.  We will use the old carts for parts to recondition the best of the remaining utility carts this winter.  

We appreciate our management's commitment to the Maintenance Department and helping us achieve our goals and objectives that ultimately provide a better experience for our Members and Guests at Deer Creek Golf Club.

BUNKER DETAIL

This is hole 14.. We repaired the edges of the bunker that were caving in due to unstable banks. We used forms and we rebuilt the edges. Now we have a flat bunker that looks great and plays even better.

GREENS NURSERY

We built a greens nursery that will serve as a source for sod to repair vandalism or other unforeseen blemishes in our putting greens.

We dug out 6 inches of soil and added sand back. We used the cores from our fall greens aeration as the sand source. We sodded half of the nursery.  On the other half we finished the top surface with a smooth grade and spread the cores evenly. The cores contain healthy bent grass plants that we will fertilize and groom it into a healthy golf green that should provide years worth of reliable service.

The nursery is located on the pond dam against the North East end of the irrigation lake. 

FINAL GREENS AERATION 2012

We always work closely with ISTRC to scientifically plan and evaluate our aeration processes at Deer Creek Golf Club. This fall we have determined that a larger hollow tine is in order to remove some organic material in the upper 2.5" of the greens profile. We start on the 17th of October and it will take two days. We always keep 9 holes open for play to minimize the impact on our customers. We also chose the late date to save the best putting surface for the September and early October tournament season. The mid October date should have the least impact on our valued customers.

As always we appreciate your cooperation as we take the necessary steps to ensure our new greens are in terrific condition for our members and guests.

TIME TO START SEEDING

With the chance of Hurricane Isaac pushing some rain our way this weekend, I recommend seeding your lawns starting this week.  I always use the first of September as a guideline for optimal seeding conditions. 

I recommend verticutting your lawns and removing all of the old dead grass and plant material with a bagger or rakes and trash bags.  Then you will incorporate your seed into the top 1/4" of the soil.  You don't want to go too deep but you must get seed soil contact to germinate seed. 

Apply a starter fertilizer at the time of seeding and then begin to water the lawn.  It needs a good soaking daily and if you have an irrigation system I recommend running three cycles per day of approximately 10 minutes per cycle until all of the seed is uniformly germinated.  Then you can reduce your watering to once per day if there is no rain to supplement the soil moisture level. 

FALL GREENS AERATION

We are aerating greens today. We are using 1/4'' hollow tines. September is a huge golf month so we choose to aerate now so the greens will be table top smooth all September.

The 1/4" tines will have a minimal impact on the putting quality of our greens.  They will be putting well the day of aeration.  We incorporate the sand and roll the greens to provide a quality putting experience during this aeration process.

We are currently testing our greens with ISTRC http://www.istrc.com (International Sports Turf Research Center) to determine what our October aeration process will be.  We will adjust our tine sizing and spacing to reflect the soil physical properties and the maturation of our new greens profile.