Monday Work--Spotification

I was planning on posting this last week, as the final installment of our November 5th work schedule, but better late than never.  I was just asked yesterday if Mondays were our off day or relaxed day when we get a break from course preparation.  The opposite is true with Mondays being the most productive day of the week.

To summarize the efforts of that day, we accomplished the following:

• Re-shaped two troublesome bunkers
• Installed a drain in a cartpath and over 100 feet of drain pipe connecting to a lake
• Verticut all the greens and the chipping green twice
• Applied 6-8 inches of mulch to over 10,000 of non-irrgated space
• Mowed all the fairways
• Mowed all tees and approaches
• Mowed the range tee and filled all divots
• Sprayed tree maintenance rings with roundup and a pre-emergent on 4 holes

And, as the last entry, we continued to spot aerify thin locations in the rough and green surrounds.  This is the third week of this practice.  The main areas we are working on are near the fairway bunkers and landing areas.  

The above photo is next to the 15th green.  This particular location is thick with thatch that keeps water from getting into the soil and therefore, the root zone.  Nightly irrigation does little to keep the turf going and hand watering runs off the intended target. This aerfication will pull some plugs out of the thatch mat and allow access to the soil below.  

The photo to the left is the rough right of the 11th fairway, adjacent to the approach.  This area was destroyed by grubs and the crows, raccoons, possums, and whatever else was trying to eat them.  Rafael spent all day aerifying, seeding, and dragging in the plugs to improve these locations, and many more.  Since then, we've been spot watering daily to keep the seed moist and encourage germination.  

This is just one step in the road to recover and we will keep repeating the process to improve the soil structure and turf density.  

Only a few more days till our next Monday!!!