Christmas Time!

During this time of year the members of MCC present the Employees with a Holiday Bonus. All of us down at the Turf Care Facility would like to say a great big Thank You to all of the members who were so generous once again this year!

Here is a picture of my full time crew. These guys and gal work all year long in very different weather extremes to provide MCC with the best possible conditions. All of them take pride in their job and enjoy working here! They really make me look good and I appreciate everything they do. THANKS GUYS!

From left to right; back row; Edgar, Aaron, Mike, Andy, Jose,

Front; Oscar, Alfredo, Cande.

SNOW ?

Today's winter precipitation was a surprise to everyone!

No concerns in regards to our Greens or Course other than it being WET.

As soon as we are able we will continue painting the Greens today. While we are painting at least two holes will be closed at at time in order for the paint to dry. We apologize for the inconvenience, although I doubt many will want to play today in the snow/muddy/wet conditions.

Due to the delay caused by the snow we may not be able to finish painting the Greens until Friday.

Painting Greens

We have begun painting Greens today. They will be done by Thursday afternoon.
We paint greens for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it looks great! Our paint job really has a natural look that really gives the golfer a brilliant target to shoot at from the fairway.
Secondly, the dark color helps attract sunlight and in turn helps to warm the surface and the soil.

Andy and Alfredo spraying first coat on #1

Applying 2nd coat to #1

Chipping Green Completed

Painted Chipping Green on Left, unpainted Putting Green on Right.

Covers are coming out!

We are bringing out the covers! We place the covers near the Greens so that they are handy and ready to be deployed when the weather demands.
As of now there is nothing in the forecast to be concerned with, but winter his coming and we never know when a cold snap may be just around the corner!

moving each of theses big covers is a several man job.

at each green we place the covers on pallets to keep them off of the ground.

We then cover them with a blue tarp to help keep them dry so they are easier to handle when needed.

Leaves!

This time of year one of our primary goals is to keep up wit the leaves so the Course remains playable. Some days are easier than others.
We blow fairways, greens and bunkers. We then mulch the leaves in the roughs.
On days that the wind is blowing too hard, it becomes a losing battle, when that is the case we simply save the gas and wait for the next day. Here are some pictures from today, I am sure over the next few weeks I will post several more pictures of the leaf control, it is quite an operation.

Sod on 13, 16

We have repaired the "sand pit" in front of 13 green. This area has been a sore spot all year, and thanks to a private donation we were able to repair last week.  With the leftover sod we were able to repair two small areas on 16 fairway also.
Late fall is not normally a good time for sod projects as the turf is not growing and the roots will not anchor the sod down. A heavy rain could float the sod or cause erosion underneath. However, since these areas are quite flat and the problem on 13 is very much in play the Greens committee and I decided it was best to do it now rather than wait.
Here are pictures of the two repaired spots on 16. (The picture I took did not come out if I can I will post one later).

Sorry for the interruption of posts! plus Coyote damage!

I apologize for the interruption of fresh updates and information! During late August we were playing catchup and were quite busy with daily maintenance and work. During that period of mundane maintenance I got out of the habit of posting here. I will once again begin posting something at least every week, if not much more often ! Thanks for the patience.

Jason

Below are a couple of pictures of damage from a Coyote on 11 green.

I have heard of this happening on other Courses but I have never seen it. I do not know why the Coyote decide to dig up the cup but he sure did a good job!

Catching up

We are behind on the rough mowing and a few other maintenance issues due to the rain, the Club Championship then the aerification all in a row. Not to mention all of the debris we have to clean before mowing. With my entire crew having to work the weekend for the tournament then a couple of long days for aerification I simply do not have the man hours to get it all done quickly.
I hope everyone understands. We should be all caught up by the time the greens are completely healed, if not sooner.

Greens aerification

We are completing our second and final greens aerification of the year. Everything went as planned and we finished on schedule. The entire course will be open in the morning. Please revisit my  post from June to see exactly what we do during aerification.
Thanks !

90 degrees!

With the recent rains and the new long term forecast having much less extreme temperatures I feel that it is safe to return to the 90 degree rule!
We will remain Cart Path Only on holes 11 and 16 in order to help protect these two weaker fairways from excessive ware in hopes of having a better winter surface.
As I write this note we have a rather large storm approaching so we may have to remain cart path only  due to wetness. Hows that for for a change?
Thank you!

Rain Sweet Rain!!!!!!!!

We got 2.25 inches of rain last night!!!!!! This will really help the course and our irrigation pond! This does not mean the severe conditions are over, but it is a start. !

Extreme Conditions= Extreme measures

8.4.11

Due to the extreme weather conditions the Greens Committee and I, with the support of the BOD, have decided to go Cart Path Only until conditions improve
.
When the turf becomes this hot and dry it attempts protect itself by "shutting down" or going dormant. When this occurs the plant stores very little water in the leaf blade leaving the plant unable to tolerate the stress of heavy traffic. The leaf blades are simply crushed by cart tires, and in some cases the weight of a person walking.

 This decision was not taken lightly and hopefully is a very temporary one.

Here are some pictures illustrating the conditions.

Until we have cooler temperatures with more moisture growing conditions will not improve. So, we have to remove the dangerous variable that we can control, cart traffic.

The damage caused by cart traffic can be long term. Although we still have plenty of time to recover, if conditions change soon, we are looking at the long term quality of the Course.

As you can see even areas of healthy turf can be affected in extreme conditions like Wednesday.

Maumelle Classic morning preparations

It takes a couple of weeks of preparations to have the Course ready for a tournament like the Maumelle Classic. However, the morning preparations  during the actual tournament is some of the most important action!
We utilize every member of our crew, most of them on the greens.
Here are pictures of most of the jobs that we accomplish in front of the golfers.

We have 4 crew members walk mowing greens.

We have 1 crew member walk mowing collars. Here is a greens mower and the collar mower on 7 green.

Lorenzo on the bunker rake and Jose on the Triplex Greens mower completing the second mowing, he follows the walk mowers. 

Alfredo is on our greens roller this morning.

Cande and Oscar are both mowing fairways.

Today Mike had to drag in the clippings left by the fairway mowers.

Andy Changes the cups and paints them with the "Hole in White"

When everything is done on the greens We will use the Stimp meter to measure how fast they are rolling.

Today they were rolling nearly 12 feet.

wildlife seen on course

I am lucky enough to be able to be out on the course when it is quite and I frequently get to observe wild life. Here are a couple of pictures I have recently taken of a few of my friends.

The next picture is an interesting one. I had nothing to do with the demise of the skunk, I just simply came across this laying in the rough just as you see it. No other remains in sight, no sign of an attack, just the head. Interesting.

Bathrooms!

The water issues mentioned in the last post were not the only water issues we have been dealing with over the last few days.
Wednesday I was finaly able to get some much needed help to repair the main city water line coming off of our meter and feeding my shop, office, and bathrooms on #6 fairway. Once the line was repaired under our entry road I attempted to install a pressure regulator onto out meter to prevent another blow out. While my crew was digging out the meter we encountered a root problem and broke the line coming into the meter. oops. The city wter department had to be called for a repair.! Everything is now up and running!

Hole in our entry road where pipe broke.

Meter Hole before problem.

Meter hole after problem.

 

Transfer pump

Our pump that we use to transfer water from 13 pond to the irrigation pond on 2 broke down last Saturday. It took me nearly all week to get it working. But it is now up and running! A big Thank you to two of my Crew, Alfredo and Jose who really came thru yesterday with nearly a full day in the pond!

Alfredo and I working on installing the check valve.

The old intake pipe and float.

The check valve that we had to clean, fix and re install.

Sod project on 12

Most of the sodding will be finished today. We will then have to keep the area extremely wet for the next week or so to help the turf take hold. After about 1 week we will begin mowing the area so we can slowly bring it down to fairway height. This area will be back to normal by the Classic if not sooner!

Collar work.

We after numerous requests we have begun attempting to improve the transition from the green to the fringe cut. To do this we are using a mower set at a height of cut between the fringe cut and the green. This will help when the ball comes to res near the edge of a green so the taller turf will not disturb the putter stroke as much. We will see a little scalping during the lowering process but this should be temporary.

MGA sponsored project on 12!

Once again the MGA has helped us with funding for a much needed project. We are removing old turf and regrading several areas on 12 fairway that have help water and been mud holes for quite some time. This work should be completed by the end of next week, and will be playable in just a few weeks.

Sorry for lack of updates!

I apologize for the lack of updates over the last few weeks. My camera grew legs and walked away, so I have not had the ability to post pictures. Fortunately we have not had anything of great importance to document. However we do have a few things going on now that will be posted shortly.  I have replaced the camera and will begin updating much more frequently.
Thanks and see you soon!

Fairway Aerification

Thursday and Friday we Aerified the fairways.
The process is a little less complicated as aerifying greens but still very labor intensive, and quite important too!

Here is Jose aerifying the fairways.

Once the cores dry enough we run over them with our rough unit to break them up. Here is Paul creating a dust storm.

After the rough unit breaks them up we follow behind with the fairway unit to grind them even further. Here is Cande at work.

This process takes a couple of days and can be very messy if weather does not cooperate. It is also very hard on our mowers, much time will be spent grinding and sharpening all of our blades next week!.