Welcome Back FLCC members!
It has been over 6 months since our last blog post, but again this season we will be using our blog as 1 means of communication for golf course related issues. The content through the summer will include projects, course photos, and many things that you may not of seen during the course of the 2016 season.
As most of our FLCC members have returned for their winter retreats the exciting news is there was no winter injury to the golf course. Most of this can be correlated with the mild winter we experienced in Michigan. Although we are off to a very good start with course conditions, the bigger challenge this year is the cooler spring that we have be witnessing thus far. But rest assured the temperatures are on the rise and we can see temperatures steadily climbing into warm consistent temperatures.
The photo of Hole #15 on the right is a great indicator on how grass looks at the moment. Extremely lush and growing rapidly. The greens crew has their hands full in keeping up with the rough at moment. The rough this time of year involves and extra mow per week, as well as a cleanup crew blowing around clippings and picking them up in certain areas.
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| #18 rough growing rapidly, awaiting the clean up crew. |
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Trees are very close to being in full leaf and flower
to showcase all the great colors of spring! |
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We have also entered into the seeding period for Annual Bluegrass (POA). We do try to control POA from producing seed head with growth regulators but in the best of seasons control it is not 100%. The seeding period will be most pronounced over the next couple weeks. What you may notice is some slight chattering (bumpiness) of putts, most noticeable in the late afternoon. We will be doing many mechanical processes over the next couple weeks from verti-cutting, brushing to topdressing to create the best possible putting surfaces through this period. Greens speeds also tend to slow down a little bit during the spring, as the POA greens want to aggressively grow.
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Ground level view of POA seed heads popping out
over the turf canopy |
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Transition line of seed heads on #12 between the
fairway and approach growth regulator treatments |
The strength in details makes a good golf course great. There are a lot of projects and maintenance work that goes unnoticed but takes up a tremendous amount of time. Below I would like to briefly share some of the course work that happened so far this spring.
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| Sodding and edging bunker faces |
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Rebuilding failing bunker edges. Using sand bags we were
able to secure the slop on #16 back left bunker |
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| Topping up bunker sand levels |
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Aerating to relieve compaction and to promote
growth in wear areas |
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Adding a new discharge pipe on the bottom
of the driving range |
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| Cart path and staircase edging and sodding |
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| Flower garden weeding and backyard landscapes |
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| Waterfall areas |
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| Weeding and refilling mulch beds and gardens |
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| Edging and leveling ground markers, sprinklers and drainage basins |
A special thank you for this years 2016 greens crew for their efforts to continuously take FLCC to a higher level.
