Update on the week

The weeks seem to be flying by. The weather is still iffy at best. This will be another typical year where we go from cool raw to straight sun and hot, if 75 can be considered hot. The greens have come along nicely and we even received a bit (.38") of rain wed night to help wash in the topdressing sand. We brushed in the sand in the afternoons and Thursday rolled them to smooth them out. Friday I sprayed our sodium flush application that adds calcium, magnesium, other micro elements and a wetting agent. In the afternoon Will mowed them dry so the sand will not build up on the rollers of the mower and this will pick up the larger particles that do not settle into the canopy. I rolled them again Saturday morning and they should be well on their way to being "normal" or healed from the aerifying.

Kevin brushing in the afternoon

The tree project wrapped up this week with the removal of the logs. These were hauled off to a saw mill in Katama to be cut into various lumber either 2x4's or 1x10 or 1x12's. The stumps were ground and all that is left is to clean up the debris and fill in the holes. The boys put a good dent in that work today hauling 3-5 dump truck loads to the dump.

Tom Robinson of Island Timber grinding stumps

Logs off to sawmill

One of the things we are slightly behind on this spring is running the irrigation system through its paces. We have not had a lot of call to use it so you get lulled into complacency. We had only a glitch Monday for the first greens watering immediately after aerifying. Another couple of cycles Monday night and no real issue. Tuesday nights watering was set to end at 5:30 Wednesday morning after a brief scare. I set the time Mon. evening to start at 4:45 pm since we were still on temporaries and there were few golfers. After running into town to buy and mail a card to my mother in RI I returned and noticed the putting green and first greens started to water and remembered I forgot to change the program. Hopefully I did not get anyone wet. Anyway with them now set to end in the morning I woke up Wed. to four different green heads stuck on. That got our attention and moved exercising the system to the top of the priority list. We often get an odd head to stick on fully or partially but rarely more than one or two at a time. Upon further inspection they all seemed to have one recurring theme: rust flakes.

Rust flakes from the inside of a sprinkler

Rust flakes on the top of a sprinkler before flushing

As previously mentioned in these blog pages we have live galvanized pipe still attached to our original 1936 AC main lines. These may be in-use or abandoned but as they deteriorate they add debris which finds its way to the heads and wreaks havoc. There was an addition to the system in the 90's of plastic pipe and sprinklers which automated the system but these were attached to the main lines so we still use the original parts for distribution. I hope this is not a harbinger of future symptoms of the system. The course i came from had cast iron main lines when I arrived and we would get quarter sized "flakes" of rust floating around. They were sometimes three quarters thick as well so more like chunks and would clog the screen at the bottom of a sprinkler to the point where hardly any water would come out. It took well over a decade and two superintendent changes before an entire system was approved. It was an interesting project to be involved with as we replaced every part of the system from pump house to sprinkler. Eventually even dredging the ponds larger to increase the storage capacity.

Plate compactor

I also ran a plate compactor through the two new bunkers this week. This will help firm up the sand. The sod is rooting nicely and these bunkers should be open for play soon.