Pumphouse Painting and More Course Checks

As I had said in my post earlier this week, I expected the pumphouse painting would be completed by the end of this week, and I turned out to be right. Bill and Lidia completed the painting this morning and did a great job. The difference from before and after is almost hard to believe. Before all the piping, pump motors and bodies, and platform were all extremely rusty and in need of some serious attention. Now everything looks great and the rusting process will be greatly slowed down. 

Pumps and Platform Before Painting

Pumps and Platform After Painting

I also was able to do an entire lap of the golf course this week to be able to check on the status of everything. For the most part I was quite happy with most everything that I had seen. I was able to get under the tarp on three other greens and they all looked just as good as #18 did. So I am quite optimistic that when the time comes that we are able to pull the tarps completely off and cut them that they should be looking very good.

The View Under the Tarp on #10 Green

It was great to see how effective our final fungicide application was in the fall last year. Not only are we seeing great disease control, but we are also seeing how much quicker things green up when the snow melts in the areas that were sprayed

Areas that were Treated vs. Not Treated

The only negative things that I have seen on the course so far from this past winter is a few areas of snow mold (microdochium nivale) on a few tees and a couple fairways that had larger amounts of snow coverage. I am not too worried about these areas though as the damage does not appear to be severe and these areas will grow in and green up as quickly as the rest of the course does and soon as the weather allows for this. But this does mean that I will be looking at my tee and fairway fungicide program for next fall to prevent this from occurring again. Otherwise I noticed a few areas of desiccation (cold winds drying out exposed turf areas in winter) on hilltops that are not in play and a few areas of mouse damage under areas of deep snow. These areas will all recover quickly and should be looking great once the golf season is here. So in conclusion, I am happy with how the course is coming out of winter and as soon as Mother Nature cooperates with us we will be ready for this golf season!

Snow Mold on #11 Tee

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Course Update

As of April 1 my new assistant had officially began working with us. His name is Bill Sandor. Bill is joining us from the Thomson Lake Regional Park Golf Course where he was running their course management operation.

This week Bill and Lidia, also a new staff member this season, have began work in the pumphouse where they are stripping all the old paint off the piping and pumps and will then be repainting it all. They should be able to complete that all this week. Things will look great in there once this is completed. 

I picked up our new flagsticks and cups for this season from one of our suppliers today. These new flagsticks should be able to handle our wind and stay in the cup in these strong winds as well. We will be receiving our new flags in the next couple weeks also. 

The new flagsticks and cups

I took another tour of the course today to see how things are looking. We are slowly getting there. It has been impressive how much snow has actually melted lately considering we have not really had much for temperatures above freezing. 

#11 fairway melting nicely

I was finally able to pull a bit of a tarp up to take a look under and see how the greens have done this winter. Judging from the back portion of #18 green, I was happy with what I had seen. Things appeared to be greening up nicely and looked healthy. I didn't see any disease and there were no unpleasant odours that would indicate suffocation/anoxia. But I never had found much for ice anywhere previously so I expected that suffocation should not be much of an issue for us. 

A look under the tarp

We are hoping for a decent weekend this upcoming weekend. If that is the case we should lose enough snow to allow us to travel around the course better. So I am hoping to be able to get out on the course and remove the snow fence that was put up around the greens and across the tee boxes to hold snow. This should help accelerate melting. So we are not at the point of saying we will be opening on a certain date, but things are looking up and we are getting much closer to the golf season!