Plug It!

We are up and running on 18 as of Friday, Apr. 16th and it's early season conditions but still tolerable.  The time spent on the front greens paid off with over 1000 plugs used to repair winter damage (tried to do a minimum of 50 a day since the middle of March).  Tarps were on and off up until the end of last week and the protection they provided helped greatly in giving the greens the needed kick in the *ss.

#4 Green. Sorry for Picture Quality. Maybe its all the shade!!!!

The unfortunate trade off was neglect on the back greens which came through 90% but were set back but an ill timed mowing and lack of water.

#15 Green. Looks icky but its coming along

I'll need to pound the water and I would love to tarp them but that would mean they'd be out of play.  I'm not sure but I think I may mess with strategic tarping throughout the week days just to speed/protect their recovery.

We have been able to aerate the healthy greens and top dress them but the will have to hold off on the back ones until they are happier.  The timing is completely wrong and recovery will be very slow.  Even though the ambient temperature is generally above normal this year you have to remember the sun is still in the earlier spring horizon and the type of light (amount and quality) and warm temperatures are short lived during the day.  An early spring aeration is my selfish way of performing a necessary operation at a time of year when people are slightly more tolerant of rough conditions on the greens.  This early in the year I believe most players are just glad to have something to do during the day than stay at home and watch daytime T.V.!

Everyday I'm Shufflin', Shufflin'....

First of all I'll keep with tradition and post the 2016 April 1st-ish photo:

 

April 2, 2016

Go to HERE and HERE for pictures from other years for comparison.  Looks like I missed last year but I'm pretty sure we're ahead by a minimum of 2 weeks. I've mowed and fertilized front 9 green two times already; for March, that's a first.

As mentioned in previous post we had disease on some of the greens again.  You can go to HERE to see a post from last year that provides an explanation of the disease.  As usual I'm looking at the reason but I'm still trying to look for a trend.

The great weather has sped the recovery and combined with tarps the soil temperatures are in the +12 range (at about 2 inches) which has resulted in this:

Looks Good From Afar....

Greens that I haven't covered are off color but are still growing, albeit slowly:

No Fake Green Colour Here!

Again, the nice weather is great for the turf but will screw up my wage budget as I'm having bring in staff 10 to 14 days sooner than I planned.  Hopefully, that can be offset with more play/revenue?

With just myself and Neil L. at work, the past month has been busy with pulling tarps, moving tarps, and re-tarping. Each day I'm here I try to do 50 plugs on the greens to repair the winter damage.  As long as I don't stop for a smoke and a pancake that only takes me about an hour.  The rest of the day seem to be spent messing with tarps (I keep mentioning tarps because they really are that time consuming!) or dealing with the random issues that pop up such as knitting together the driving range net, tree removal, or what have you.  Maybe the next post I'll try and get down and dirty with what happened this winter.