How much has it rained? Or better yet, How little irrigation have we used?

It is no news flash to anyone that the weather has been wet. We keep informal weather records (highs, lows, precipitation amounts, etc) for reference. Same can be said for the water output of the irrigation pump station. Over the last 6 weeks of 2010 we have used 3.5 million gallons of water. Although that may sound like a lot of water but one needs to know that (best case scenario) the irrigation system at KGC can distribute about 450, 000 gallons/night when we are watering everything. So really 3.5 million gallons is only just under 7 complete irrigation cycles (i.e. 7 nights of watering everything). In the past we have usage as been: 2005-8.3 million gallons, 2006-10.8 million, 2007-12.9 million, 2008-7 million, and 13 million gallons last year.

The amount of rain fall (approximately) recorded at KGC this year is 52mm for May and 32 mm for June (not including this weekend). The weird and sort of disappointing part is, according to statistics for the past 30 years, the average rainfall for May is 42 mm and for June is 51mm. It sure feels like an above average year for rain to me! To be fair, Environment Canada has a little disclaimer regarding the accuracy of the weather records for Kimberly since during weekends and holidays no weather data is recorded. One tool I've been looking into for the past couple years has been a weather station for KGC that would log environmental conditions. There is numerous models ranging from the low $100's up to $15,000. Expensive weather stations pay for themselves over time since they can be integrated into the irrigation system and save on water and power usage. At this point in time we are lucky in that water costs are still relatively cheap at KGC so any weather station we would buy would be on the very low end of the price range.

Golf course wise the weather seems to have come during the week days which really cramps our style since most staff and work hours occur Monday to Friday and we depend on good weather conditions to get things done. Most of the cart path sodding is completed. Any remaining areas next to cart paths will be finished using aeration cores such as described in the May 19th posting. We have begun to replace the damage turf on the collars and aprons on some of the front nine greens and will continue for the rest of the following week. If possible we will begin to aerate parts of those fairways that were damage this past winter and try to get some more recovery in the weak areas. We are falling behind with respect to flower beds, string trimming, fertilizing, green aeration, and bunker maintenance. I am hoping to get caught up by bringing on more staff (school is out soon) to help with projects and routine maintenance.

Weeks of May 9th and 16th

Punching and Collecting Cores on 15 Apron

This past week was good weather wise but pretty average production wise. Most new employees are trained up and we can now begin to take the more experienced staff away from routine maintenance and start to use their skills to finish off or get started on some of the projects I would like to get wrapped up before the end of May.
Starting on last Friday, we aerated and top dressed all the collars and aprons. I attended a seminar a few years back where an agronomist from the USGA suggested incorporating the collars and aprons into the same aeration and top dressing program as regular greens. The idea is to extend the greens playing characteristics to immediate area and allow players the option to take advantage of those characteristics as they approached a green. This year we are also doing it to help the light, air, and water reach past the matted, dead turf from this past winter and give the existing turf as well as the seed bank within the soil a helping hand in growing and filling in the funky spots.

We will use the cores generated from this aeration as a seed bed for filling in the sides of the recently renovated cart paths. We will mix in a healthy quantity of perennial rye grass seed (quick to germinate and able to withstand traffic stress) with the cores to help get turf established next to cart paths. Sodding the little strips next to the path, especially now with cart traffic and summer coming may be a waste of sod. The cores are composed of the ever ubiquitous Poa annua and as such are able to grow in areas that other grass may have a hard time getting established. One request to players is to try to limit traffic on these area until they have filled in. We don't have enough ropes and stakes to block off all the area; besides to much of that stuff always makes a golf course looks cluttered and messy.

Core Bordering the
Cart Path on 10 Fwy

Paving

BA Blacktop has been at KGC for the past 2 days and finished their part in paving the cart paths. We had to close the front and back nines on different days to limited interference between the paving crew and the players. Each day the paving crew shows up on your door step it costs over $7000 so it was to the clubs advantage to make sure the pavers could work without any interference. Everyones understanding with the respect to inconveniences caused by the paving project is greatly appreciated and will be, hopefully, rewarded with a nice smooth ride!

Hot mix had to brought to the paver from staging areas since the tandems could not access areas within the golf course


Loaders travelled across certain areas on the fairways with the only real damage on #6 where there was severe rutting.


This just shows the amount of equipment needed to do even a tiny project like KGC just did


End result

You can go to www.kimberleygolfclub.com/news.html to understand how we chose which areas to core out and completely re-do versus "over paving". There remains numerous spot that still need repairing but it is probably wise to look at paving cart paths as an on going maintenance process versus a one shot deal as long as we are dealing with trees and their roots. Now that paving is complete the grounds crew will spend the season tying in the edges and cleaning up all the seemingly random piles of debris left all over the golf course.

Fall Paving

This falls project has been the renovation of select cart paths on the golf course and repaving a portion of the parking lot. You can go to the KGC home page to see a description of the cart path portion of the project. Most of the work was done after closing so I'll post some pictures with descriptions here.
The earlier weather impacted the paving contractors work schedule at other locations and, as a result, the work that was suppose to be completed by the contractor on the golf course was pushed back until spring 2010.

We began by removing the old pavement and digging out the roots causing the humps in the cart paths.

We used a chain trencher to cut any roots next to the paths with the hope of delaying any damage to the paths in the future. We then hauled 200 tonnes of road crush with our utility vehicles to fill in all the excavated cart paths on the golf course. Work then stopped and will begin again in the spring with final grading and paving of the paths.

The project that was completed involved paving a path to the members cart storage area and repaving the parking lot by the Johns cart storage to add more parking spots.