Wow! We were surprised by a half inch of snow today on the course! There was a low percentage chance for snow accumulation last night but not high enough for us to consider it seriously. It only delays our plans to continue remove the last of the leaves. We are hoping that it melts either Thursday or Friday.
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When I look back at the 2014 season, I am thankful for many things. One of them is the staff for the Grounds Department! Without their hard work and dedication, the course would never play and look as good as it did this year. In this picture, you can see the 2nd Annual end of season Pig Roast! Once again, I realize they are not just good greenkeepers but great eaters! Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!
With all this usually warm weather, we spent some time rebuilding the bunker face on the practice hole. In the two years since the last time we did it, the face had accumulated close to 1 foot of sand! The sand comes from all the practice swings. So, we remove the grass and sand buildup to return the bunker back to it's original shape and height. We are also adding some fine fescue to the edge of the fairway bunkers on #5.
Today, we experienced the first hard frost of the year. I had to keep the course closed to play until 10:00am. As for golf course maintenance, we have been bust edging the bunkers on 5, 14, 11, 13, 15 and 4. We have also been aerifying the rough between the tees and fairways. Next week we are planning to do some sodding in the rough and continue leaf clean up. I hope everyone enjoys Halloween!
After 1.3 inches of rain over the last 36 hours, the sun has returned! We are still wet in lower areas but carts are allowed today. I would ask that you please stay on the high side of the hole where you can. In the mean time, we are busy prepping the course for today and for tomorrow's Oktoberfest tournament. Hopefully we will see you either today or tomorrow.
After almost 3 months, the new bermuda grass on one half of the range tee is still holding up well. As some of you might know, bermuda goes dormant when the temperature get colder. When it stops growing, it can not recover from divots. I think this will happen within in the next few weeks. To help get a few more time out of the tee, we are overseeding the tee with ryegrass. If all goes well, as the bermuda goes dormant, the ryegrass will germinate. In the spring, the ryegrass will die off and the bermuda will take over. I will post more updates in the near future regarding our overseeding project.
It has been a busy couple weeks since my last post. We have spent the the time aerifying tees and approaches again, establishing more fescue in the native areas, planting trees and seeding the rough. We also just trimmed some pine trees along West Chester Pike, the two sycamore by the putting green and center circle and spruces by 2 tee. The next few weeks will feature some bunker edging, more tree trimming and topdressing tees and approaches. It seems we might seeing the trees drop their leaves about ten day earlier than normal. I hope to see you on the course!
As most of you know, we have been very busy with tournaments over the last 7 days. We were able to have a successful Member-Member Championship last Friday and Saturday despite the rain. We had to get right back at prepping the course for the PGA Section Championship that started with a Pro-Amateur on Monday followed by three days of stroke play. Today marks the final round. I very happy to say that many participates have told me how much they love the course and the new clubhouse. It has been just a great event and Llanerch members should be very proud of their club!
We have finished aerifying fairways today. We have some topdressing still to do on approaches and need to add some more fertilizer on greens tomorrow. That being all said, we are ahead of schedule enough that we are opening tomorrow at 11:00am with carts. Thanks for your patience.
Any Golf Course Superintendent will tell you they prefer to aerify when its warm and dry. Well, today is very very dry! It puts in a position where we have to use more water than normal. As for warm....well its warm plus plus! We are already 88 degrees and approaching 90 before the end of the afternoon. We just have to adjust the amount of sand we use. So far, everything is going as planned. We will open the practice putting greens tomorrow. The range and practice are open today.
We started aerifying greens today. The holes are about "medium" in size. Over today and tomorrow, we will roll, topdress and broom the greens. Are goal is to fill in as many holes as possible to the surface. The more we can do that, the fast the greens heal. Tomorrow, we are slated to start aerifying the tees and approaches.
Where is Summer? It is crazy to see such low temperatures over the weekend. I was looking at last year's temperature records and notice that this time last year we were 7 degrees hotter! That might not sound like much but in agricultural terms, that is huge difference. Today, we are fertilizing the greens to promote some growth before aerification next Tuesday. We are aerifying greens next Tuesday, fairways on Wednesday, tees and approaches on Thursday. This schedule will be all dependent on the weather and could change very quickly.
As of yesterday, we opened the range tee where we had planted bermuda grass! It is still a little "young" but has strong roots. We will be filling the divots with a sand mixture only. We do not use any kind of seed in the divot mixture. This is because bermuda grass grows vegetatively and will "spread" from the edges of the divot to heal. I hope everyone enjoys the playability of the new surface!
As you are playing the golf course, you might notice some of the native areas have been cut down. On holes 1,8,16 and 14 we started to prep the areas for applications of a herbicide. The herbicide will reduce the invasive common bermuda that has taken over in some spots. We made these same applications last year with some success. We feel that it might a couple more years of this program to eradicate it.
The Course received 1.4 inches of rain last night! It was a little more than we wanted but we were glad to get it! We will not be able to mow any bentgrass today but will continue to cut the rough. As for the range, it is growing in quickly now. Last week's cooler than average night temperatures was a great for the greens but slowed the growth of the bermuda. But sunny skies and hot afternoons are big help! We mowed it today and I hope to have it open by Saturday as long as the weather cooperates.
Yesterday, we finished sodding the range tee with 9,000 square feet of Latitude 36 bermuda grass. The sod was a little dry from the over 2 hour drive from the Maryland sod farm but looks good! We will let it "nit in" for a about 8 days and then we will start to mow and aerify it. We are hoping to be open by August first, depending on weather. The left side of the range will still be open for practice.
Yesterday, we started to strip out 9,000 square feet of bentgrass from the right side of the range tee. The grass will be replaced with the newest and most cold tolerant bermuda grass call Latitude 36. All our research points to this grass being a better turf to use on the range. It heals from divots faster and does not require us to seed the divots. It heals in an aggressive vegetative way opposed to being from seed. We are sodding the tee this morning. If the weather stay some what warm, we hope to have the sod open for play by August 1st. More updates later.
I don't have to remind you that it has been very hot for the last 24 hours. We have said it before but needs to be said again...we do not roll greens when we experience weather over 92 degrees. We have seen the greens react in a negative fashion upon rolling with high temperatures. We will start rolling again once we see a dip in temperatures. Thanks for your understanding.
As you can see in this picture, ball marks are on the rise. Everyone has been great this year fixing their ball marks (and some that were not theirs)! I appreciate the collective effort so far to stop this issue. Fixing them results in healthier turf, smoother putting surface and reduces the chances that poa annua will establish itself on the greens. If you have questions on how to best fix them, please ask the Golf Staff or myself. Thanks for the help!!!
As we move from May into June, temperature started to finally get hot. Looks like that we be short lived as we had a quick storm come in last night and lower both the temperature and humidity. We are using today to concentrating on smoothing and leveling out the sand in the bunkers. Dan, Llanerch's horticulturist, is spending time adding some more plants to the vertical garden on #18. Depending on the weather, we will start to topdress approaches later this week. Hope to see you out on the course!
Today, we had a contractor start the process of sealing the parking lots by the practice hole, pool and tennis. They will apply 2 layers and an extra layer on high traffic areas. They will come back at night and re-striping all the parking spaces. These lots will be closed to parking until at least tomorrow afternoon. Thanks for your patience.
We have spent the last few days verticutting the bentgrass fairways. This is a mechanical process where we run small circular blades through the turf canopy. That makes the turf "stand up". Then we cut that grass on the fairways.This produces a "tighter" lie for the ball. It also is benefits the overall health of the plant. So the next time your playing and you see "lines" in the fairways, you will know why.
Llanerch received 6.3 inches of rain! We have seen over 70% of the bunkers washed out. We are working now to redistribute sand in the bunkers, cleanup mulch piles and pick up debris by creeks and ponds. This is the second time in less then 3 years we have had a storm with over 6 inches of rain. What used to be every 50 or 100 years is becoming every 3-5 years!
Yesterday, we received 1.5 inches of rain! The course weathered the storm very well! We had almost no washouts of sand in the bunkers! We had some standing water in a couple of fairways but drained enough to get carts out around 11:45am. The bigger surprise is just how cold it is outside. We were at 28 degrees this morning with a wind chill of 20 degrees! Looks like we will have some cold morning for the next few days. If you are planning to come out and play early, don't be surprised by a frost delay. Let's just keep our fingers crossed that we can say "goodbye" to frost and "hello" to a warm dry spring!
Today, we are preparing for heavy rains over the next 24-36 hours. We are racing to mow everything today in the case it is too wet tomorrow. We are also spreading sand on lower areas of the fairways to help them drain faster. The staff will be taking a blacktop tamping machine to some of the bunkers to pack the sand down. This can reduce the severity of the sand "washing out" from heavy rain.
Finally! The sun has come out and it is starting to warm up! We are aerifying and topdressing greens and will reopen the course tomorrow. We are also cleaning out and raking all the bunkers, mowing fairways and tees. Yesterday we rolled and mowed greens. We are hoping to finish the last of the storm tree damage clean up by tomorrow. More updates to follow!
This is a picture of the new patio off 18 green taken a hour ago! I am just speechless about this weather. I just went outside and measure 2.5 inches of snow! We will have to wait until the snow melts before we can continue cleaning up from all the other damage from the .......you guessed it...snow. The other picture is obviously a 4 leaf clover that will hopefully give us some good luck when it comes to getting some warm weather! Enjoy your St. Patrick's Day!
As of this Monday, large areas of snow melted but we still have large areas with snow on it. I am hoping that by later this week, the snow will all but be gone. We are still cutting up branches, chipping branches and raking up pine needles. We will continue with that type of work until the snow clears up. I will be posting more updates on the course all this week.
I feel like all I do is post tree updates. Well, here is another! Aradar Tree Service is removing two Eastern White Pines by 10 tee because they were so damaged. Aradar will be working along Country Club Lane tomorrow. The Grounds staff is concentrating on cleaning up broken limbs behind #1 and #3 green. More information tomorrow.....
Just a quick post today. As of 8:30am today, we have a little over 8 inches of new snow! It is switching between rain, ice, sleet and snow for the last hour. We are plowing some snow in the parking lots now. It sounds like we might get another 3-7 inches of snow, sleet and ice before the end of the day. On another note, only 34 more days until Spring! Be safe!
As you can see from the picture, this white pine has had roughly 30% of it's branches torn off of it. We have at least 40 trees that look some thing like this. Once the weather improves, we will concentrate in chipping up the branches. I am hoping we can complete the work in 2 weeks if the weather cooperates.
As you can see from this photo, we have an independent contractor removing branches from the electrical wire by the tennis courts. They were able to fix the wires and keep power flowing to the Clubhouse. On the golf course, we are picking up branches and looking to schedule Aradar Tree Serve to help us with the high elevation work. Will continue to keep you update as the week goes.
We are currently beginning the process of cleaning up all the broken branches from the ice storm yesterday. We have Aradar Tree service removing downed trees along Edmond Avenue to allow traffic on the street. Llanerch's Grounds staff is chipping branches in the clubhouse parking lot. We will continue to work along the perimeters of the property and the parking lots for the near future. I will post photos of the damage in the very near future.
14 inches of snow!!! Wow!!! The course is completely cover in snow drifts and ice. We are concentrating on plowing snow drifts and salting the remaining ice in the parking lots.. When I was driving to the course this morning, it was 0 degrees! It is very difficult, even with salt, to get the ice to break up and melt when it is this cold. Any time we do not spend outside, we are working on our yearly winter maintenance of turf equipment. Lets hope for warmer weather soon!!
It has been mild week so far but that we all be coming to end by next Tuesday with the return of very cold temperatures. We have been spending our time continuing to clean up leaves and sticks on the course. We also have been fixing tire rutting along the cart paths and parking areas by 1 tee and 18 green. We are going to start sodding these areas Monday before the cold kicks in!!
Starting this Friday, I will be introducing a Geese Flusher and her dog on the property to reduce the geese problem. During the January-Febuary months, the dog will be here a few times a week. In March -April, the handler and dog will be her 2-3 a day as we aggressively try to move the geese away. This system is both completely legal and humane. I am hoping this will mark the beginning of a reduction of the geese.
Happy New Years! As the first post of 2014, we start with SNOW!! We had a an unofficial measurement of 5.5 inches of snow on the golf course. It is hard to get a real accurate measurement because the snow is blowing around. The snow should start to melt on Sunday and Monday with more mild temperatures and rain.