A couple of thank you's

Often throughout the course of the growing season members lend their personal talents or equipment to help us complete a project, give us material, or save a crew members thumb (it wasnt that bad).

For the cart path project on #17 we borrowed a local contracters plate packer to pack the base course for the concrete and when a full truck didnt quite finish the cart path the last two yards came for free. I certainly appreciate the help and while almost all of these donation go unmentioned they dont go unnoticed.

When we put up the new canopies this spring we got to borrow a contractors dyna lift which would have cost a little to rent and added a couple of hours to the task. The best part about that was now I am a licensed operator if I need to hang some trusses. I think the only thing you need to know about hanging trusses is how to drive the dyna lift. Right?

And today, I was pretending to be a mechanic and tried to remove my thumb from my hand. I finished up my morning work and was still losing blood so I stopped over at the doctors house for some stitches and a medical demit from my 2:20 tee time today. I sure appreciate the time and money savings to patch me up.

I know I have probably forgotten someone or some act of kindness to our crew, but we really do appreciate the help. We work hard for you and that kindness makes it worth the effort.

Another cottonwood goes down. We also cut down two birch trees this week on the back nine. I notice about two or three more cottonwoods that will be cut down sometime before next season and I am shooting for the removal of at least two Russian Olives near the range before summer staff leaves for school.

During this heat wave it is just to hot for tree work and with night time lows dipping into the 80's we have really been monitoring our night time water and that is why you may see some day time overhead irrigation in the fairways. We have also been out handwatering and that will continue as the heat passes and we get a little more aggressive with the greens heading into Pro-Am preparations.

Now what are we doing.......................

Once again this week we are very busy battling disease, weather, and trying to finish up a couple of projects on the golf course. We topdressed again this Monday with another very light amount of sand and mother nature watered it in Monday night. We also topdressed the tees and approaches. Topdressing has so many benefits and one of them being to protect the crown of the plant and prevent scalping. So mornings after a heavy rain (Tuesday) the consistent and regular topdressing allow us to safety mow greens in less than ideal situations.

Monday we sprayed all the fairways (12 hours) with a grub preventative. The insecticide takes about one month to set up and since we normally start to see grub damage during the middle of August our goal is to complete our application by July 15th. We also had a bunch of debris down from the wind storm which required more man hours than anticipated.

The forecast is not nice as we work our way into the weekend so I am going to make a budgeted fungicide application on all tees and fairways hopefully before the weekend. This application could fight off disease for up to 21 days. Lets hope disease pressure is not so strong the last half of July. Greens were sprayed on their regular schedule today, even though I was a little late getting out because of the rain delay.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) we will be pouring the final piece of the cart path on #17 if the weather allows and the final grading should be completed by the weekend.

Looks like next week could be a tree trimming week, handwatering week, and fairway fertilizing week, but it is awful early to tell for sure.

Tasks completed this week................

This week we completed some more cart path on #17. Cut down a dying cottonwood on #14 and topdressed the greens. We also started on our grub preventative on tees and green surrounds and fertilized both the tees and approaches. The grub application needs to be watered in and watering the fertilizer in will hastens its effects. So our irrigation plan was to not water anything Thursday night with the idea we would be watering a little heavy on Friday night, and when I say a little heavier I am talking about .14 of an inch or less.

The downside of this plan is the Club Championship players on Saturday morning may experience a little softer conditions first thing in the morning, but Sunday should be better.

A quick disease update: We have some.

on the golf course...........

Well, we are certainly going through a hot, humid stretch right now and except for some minor dollar spot break through on some tees we are clean in the disease battle so far. I am going to fertilize tees and approaches this week which should help beat back and heal the dollar spot.

I expect if the weather does not break we will start to see some disease in the fairways.

The dying cottonwood on #14 is laying down and will be cleaned up tomorrow. We will start a grub preventative sometime this week and could start working on our drainage problem on #14 although the answer right now seems to be to adjust the fairway and lay sod with the thought of moving the fairway back sometime in the fall.

We will also be removing a couple of dying birch trees in the roughs on #13 and #14 but I doubt anyone will even know when they disappear.

The crew has been getting worked hard these last few weeks and I, not unlike you, appreciate their dedication to the golf course and its condition. But, we have a lot of work yet to accomplish so I am going to keep my foot on the gas. The best thing about working on the golf course is you get to work outside and the worst thing about the golf course is you have to work outside. Most days in July cover the second part.

#17 cart path progress.................

The cart path on #17 continues to progress. I have plans to make another pour mid week. And probably finish the path the following week. Depending on how much the total job costs I may be laying some retaining wall blocks on the edge closest to the tunnel so the banks

are not running over the concrete edge.
Again a lot of the finish work will take place after the Pro-Am and more likely after Septemeber 15th.

The next pours will not require any changes in routing to and from the golf course or from #17 to #18 unlike our first section.