CABO SAN LUCAS

I was fortunate to be awarded a trip to CABO for achieving the EAGLE GOLF Superintendent of the year award for 2010. My wife Angela and I traveled to Mexico and experienced a wonderful vacation filled with awesome food, world class golf, and a great deal of relaxation.

EAGLE has a partnership with Questro Golf. Questro owns and operates many resorts and golf courses in Cabo. Please consider Questro and EAGLE for your next trip south of the border.

3 CREEK CROSSING

The bridge on three has been deteriorating for years.  The bridge was beyond repair.  The Deer Creek Maintenance Staff tackled the project.  It took three days and a little growing pains from our customers that were re-routed around the project.  We will wait until spring to finish landscaping and seeding the area. 

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AERATION

We are aerating greens this week. We appreciate your cooperation as we carry out this vital cultural practice.

Without bogging you down with the details, greens aeration is one of the most important things we do to provide excellent playing conditions throughout the season.  We take many steps to customize our aeration practices to best benefit our greens and our guests.  We test the physical properties of our greens prior to aeration.  This information tells us how compacted the greens are, how much organic material has built up from root development and thatch accumulation, percolation rates, and many other physical variables that determine the health of our putting greens.

This season we determined that we could use a 1/4" aeration tine on very close spacing and pull a core.  This allows us to displace organic material, reduce thatch, as well as reducing the compaction.  This practice fits our current situation and also has the least amount of impact on the playability of the putting surface. 

GOOSE ROUNDUP

As you all know, the geese are very disruptive on the golf course. They peck holes in the greens and leave droppings everywhere. We were fortunate to utilize the services of Andrew Friesen. Andrew works for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. He is a Wildlife Biologist. He tags the geese that he catches, he hauls them far away to a lake where they are encouraged to live in a natural habitat that is not disruptive to people in the city. The tags make it possible for Andrew and his team to monitor the behavior of the birds. This is a safe and responsible way to manage the pests while offering a natural solution for wildlife and game hunters in the future.

DEER CREEK FLOODING

Those of you that are familiar with Deer Creek Golf Club are well aware of our risk of flooding if we receive 1" of rain in less than one hour.  Realistically we can experience many flood events in one season and have for many years.  I appreciate our Members and Guests as they are very understanding and allow us the courtesy to clean up the flood damage and get our property back in the condition that we all expect when we visit Deer Creek Golf Club.  Obviously the flood cleanup demands our labor and financial resources and other areas of the property are neglected for that short period of time.  Typically the flood cleanup takes a few days and then we put our major focus back on golf course conditioning.  This week we still have some tree cleanup to do but we are in fairly good condition going into the weekend.  The details will improve as we move into the weekend and try to get back on schedule. 

Thanks again for your courtesy and cooperation.  I hope you can get out here this weekend to enjoy the great weather.   

DRYING OUT

Sorry for the delay. I had some phone issues and didn't find time to post for a while.

You are well aware of the extremely wet weather pattern we have experienced in this area this spring. June is now here and I fully expect mother nature to balance the law of averages and hit us with a prolonged stretch of dry weather. We fortunately made it through the wet strech without any major damage to the course. We struggled to keep up with the mowing and detail work but we are rapidly catching up now that drier conditions are here.

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PRE EMERGENT FERTILIZER

Now is the time to finish your 2011 spring preemergent fertilizer applications on your lawns. I prefer to use prodiamine (brand name barricade) and another great one is dithiopyr (brand name dimension). Both can be picked up at your local Lesco store. Ask for those active ingredients and they will be happy to show you the selection they have that has those active ingredients in it. The reason I like these products is the weed coverage. We have a broad spectrum of weed pressure in Kansas City and these are the least expensive herbicides that cover the weed pressure. Barricade should be applied by April 15th and Dimension can be applied as late as may 15th. Dimension has some post emergent activity on crabgrass so that is why it can be applied later in the season.

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