It seems to be turning itself into a long snowy winter. which is my preference, versus rainy cold winter. However, since I've been struggling through the "100 Day Cold" since January I'm starting to long for some seasonable spring weather!
After the brief warm spell 10 days ago I went out to check snow pack and surfaces. I get around the course on a ski track I try to maintain throughout the winter but there is so much snow I haven't been able to get out with my machine so I ended up "postholing" my way around to some greens to take a look.
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| The tape is crooked but you get the idea |
To be honest, we've had snow like this before so although the amount is substantial it's not unreasonable. The problem I have is it's too much to remove with the tools we have. With the greens surface mostly frozen I could use the bobcat but because of the amount of snow we end up with huge snow banks that take longer to melt. A manageable amount of snow is around 16". We have some black sand which I've used before (go
HERE) but not enough for all the greens. I'm working on other ideas to cut the snow but in my experience the sand is the best. I made mention last fall about getting snow off early to mitigate disease and that is still my plan but I have to be careful since the freeze/thaw cycles that are synonymous with spring are one of the ways to kill grass - especially poa. However, with no real thawing of the surfaces occurring under the snow and no obvious ice to date I believe it is safe-ish to leave the snow on a bit longer.
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| Brown tips from last fall but otherwise looking good |
The only project planned this spring is, hopefully, the replacement of the netting at the driving range. Environmental factors (U.V. light and wind) create constant wear and tear that ultimately leads to holes.
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| Big hole at a pole |
We've been able to patch holes by knitting together tears but last year we began to see rips and tears develop from holes far outside of our reach. We can try to limp through in typical KGC fashion but there is a 4 week lag time from ordering to having the net arrive on site so if one of the tears eventually takes down the whole netting the range will be out of service until the netting is replaced. Plus we would have to figure out a way to get a bucket truck through to the range which is a somewhat less damaging and disrupting process in the late winter/early spring while the ground is still frozen versus any other time of the year.
Snow wise and project wise we are at a bit of a standstill. I can't help but think that, based on the weather pattern we seem to be stuck in, that it has the potential to be slow start to the season....stay tuned.....
