Island Work

In late March a couple of our crew members began working on sprucing up the island.  The area had become an eyesore with overgrown shrubs and fallen branches.  After a week of work a huge improvement had been made.  Maintenance will continue through the summer. 

We Compost!

Since arriving here in 2002, we began a composting program that has grown into a mountain of topsoil.  It has been a number of years since we have been forced to buy topsoil and the money savings is significant.

Each year we add leaves, excavated soil from the course, sod, stump grindings (wood shavings) and a few grass clippings.  This mixture has produced a wonderful topsoil that we use on the course for various projects.   

We use the excavator to "turn" the compost to add air and mix the material.  If you are curious, the compost area is located left of 3 fairway behind the evergreens.   

Greens Aerification

What a spring!  I have been away from my blogger dashboard for quite some time, now.  So, I have alot to talk about in the upcoming posts.

The warm spring has given us the opportunity to aerify the greens much earlier than we normally do.  This spring we chose to deep-tine the greens with solid tines instead of core aerify.  Solid tines are simply a solid metal rod that is thrust into the ground by the machine.  This action displaces the soil and creates a cavity or channel for sand and air.  No material is removed in this process.

A step by step approach to this process is as follows:

1.  Topdress the greens with sand
2.  Deep Tine Aerify
3.  Allow the sand to dry
4.  Broom sand into aerification holes
5.  Blow off or pickup excess sand


Here Nick is brooming the sand into the aerification holes.  This will take many passes over the green to get the majority of the surface free of excess sand and all of the holes filled.