Monday was a frigid, 28*F frosty morning in Highlands. We used the frost delay to work on some projects that didn't involve walking or mowing turf. On #1. there are two clusters of Rhododendron on the right side of the hole just before the landing area. We aggressively went through these areas removing anything growing that wasn't a Rhododendron, Mountain Laurel or other desired tree. We did the same thing on #7 on the left of the cart path; the area above #6 green. What an improvement! Now that these briars are cut back to the ground, we are going to do our best to keep them chemically controlled from now on.
If you saw sprinkler heads running on greens this morning, you're probably wondering what we are doing, given the 2.75" of rain we just received. A application of Gypsum was put on the greens today; an application that we make every 30 days. This is a calcium amendment that easily leaches from the soil if we don't stay on top of it. In our temperate rainforest climate, we have to apply more fertilizer to our sand based rootzones than golf courses in other areas because the constant rain leaches nutrients.
An application of calcium sulfate is applied to the greens. AKA Gypsum.
Now that the fairways are relatively dry again, we are back at it with the fairway seeder. The goal is to seed the following fairways with this first batch of seed: #1, #3, #5, #12 and #15. These are the fairways that I feel would benefit most from inner-seeding. At a rate of 0.5 lbs./1000ft2 two directions on the fairway and approach, it takes approximately 75lbs of seed to finish a hole. That works out to about $1,200 per hole to inner-seed.