Upcoming Maintenance Morning Tasks

We have an extremely busy Maintenance Morning planned for next Monday (May 28th).  Here are a few of the tasks we have scheduled:

• TDS West will be on-site to complete the sand-banding project on #9 and #18 approaches.  The sand-banding will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our slit drainage system in areas where thatch levels are deemed to be higher than normal.  To learn more about this process, here is a link to a previous blog post I wrote about it: http://qgolfclub.blogspot.ca/2012/03/another-drainage-update.html 

• We will be slit-seeding and fertilizing the grass teeing area on the practice range very heavily to improve the density of the turf as we continue to work on re-opening it for play.  Unfortunately, we have not been able to dedicate as much time to the range teeing area as we'd hoped to this spring, but now that we have caught up on many of the course duties, we will be spending lots of time on it.  I am not going to predict when we will re-open it, but rest assured that it will be in the best possible condition before we do.

• We will also be removing approximately 3' of bunker liner, a.k.a "fluff", from the edges of the fairway bunkers on #1.  This is where the crows and other birds have been aggressively digging it up and tearing pieces of it out for their nests.  We anticipate this will solve the liner problems, but we will continue to monitor them to see if we need to take further action.

• Another cultural practice scheduled for Monday is verti-cutting the tees.  This process removes organic matter (thatch) by thinning out the turf canopy.  Verti-cutting is a method of mowing with a set of vertically mounted blades that cut into and perpendicular to the surface of the turf.  Here is what a verti-cutting reel looks like closeup:
  
  

  

  series of thatch removing vertically mounted blades

  
  
  This slicing action removes organic material at a depth that can be adjusted based on how aggressive you'd like to get.  We will be verti-cutting the tees at a depth of 1/8" today, which may not sound that aggressive, but I assure you that this removes a lot of material.  Here is a photo of the organic material removed from only 4 greens last fall at a depth of 1/16":
  
  

  

  thatch harvested from only 4 greens

• Finally, we hope to also slit-seed the tees behind the verti-cutting process.  This may or may not happen though if the verti-cutting process moves slower than we anticipate.

All that being said, as of today (Thursday, May 24th), the forecast is calling for 5-10mm of rain on Monday so many of these scheduled tasks may be postponed anyway!  Maybe I'll budget for a dome for the golf course next year so weather can no longer hinder our progress!