Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Winter projects progress


As I had mentioned towards the end of last year, we have been working on a few things around the course while the turf was in a dormant state. Here is a little update on what we were able to accomplish during that time with a winter "skeleton" crew.

The trees along the left side of hole two have all been limbed up to allow the irrigation to get to the turf. You should see turf improvements all along that area this season. We have also been around to various holes around the golf courses cleaning out deadwood (#2, #4) and cleaning out desert mistletoe throughout the entire golf course. Desert mistletoe is the dense cluster of brittle, leafless jointed green stems that you will see most commonly in the mesquite trees. If mistletoe is ignored it will spread from branch to branch and eventually to the neighboring tree. It is a slow parasite but would eventually kill the tree.

        
Limbing up trees along #2 cartpath   



We were able to get a few sumps done to drain water off the cart paths. We started off tackling the bad ones first; 9, 11 and one leading to the maintenance shop. We still need to get out to holes 7, 12 and 15 to get these knocked out before summer.


    #9  tee sump
The crew removing sod for the sump on #11 cartpath
       #11 sump
      #11 sump
    Shop Sump
    Shop sump
  Finished shop sump


We have been trying to get the bunkers back into better shape as far as playability and aesthetics go. The back 9 bunkers have been edged out and cleaned. A lot of the bunkers had lost their lip on the low side and have had a lot of bermuda grass contamination. Along with cleaning the edges, we have been checking depths of the sand, moving sand and adding sand where needed. We are shooting for 1.5-2” inches on the face of the bunkers  to prevent any “fried egg” lies and 4-5” on the bottoms to give the player a little fluff the splash their shot out. We are continuing on the front 9 as we are about halfway through there.

 #12 bunker new edge- added sand
#10 bunker new edge
 #8 bunker new edge...added sand
 #7
#7



As always, Philly, our mechanic, has been very busy in and around the shop cleaning, organizing and preparing the equipment for another long season.

Clay McKinley
PDSCC Golf Course Superintendent

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