Rolling Road GC Golf Course Management

  What a roller-coaster of weather the past week.  I was wearing shorts last Saturday watching my son's soccer game, came back to work on Monday and didn't have enough layers on.  I shouldn't be surprised with our weather but Mother Nature will always have the final say in the best laid out plans.   The team and I were planning on starting winter projects this week and punching rough but the cold, rainy weather changed our plans.  With frost every morning the team was able to remove all flowers and cut down all ornamental grasses around the property before the frost lifted.   We also heard this week that the new siding for the maintenance shop was being made and could be here by the end of the month.  So the team started clearing out the back of the shop to get ready for the siding.  As you are playing you will see some of our equipment outside the shop fence.  This is temporary and will be moved back in once the siding project is c...

Another great week with warm and sunny weather. The team took advantage of conditions and was able to get in a lot of work before the remnants of Hurricane Nicole should reach us on Friday. On Thursday, the team finished up topdressing greens and verti-cutting fairways. We also performed a solid tine aerification of high-traffic areas near greens and overseeded the rough. Lastly, the simulator room has reopened - just in time for the arrival of some cold weather. Improvements include a new projector, a refurbished launch monitor*, and refinished padding and walls. We are still awaiting delivery of carpeting and a new video card so we can upgrade to latest version of software. With items backordered, it might take 6 to 8 weeks before the project is fully wrapped up. Thanks for reading. * Correction: the launch monitor is still being refurbished. We are currently using a launch monitor on loan from a member.

  The warm weather continued this week and looks like it will stay around for a while.  After the cold weeks we had in the middle of the month the course perked back up with the warm weather and grass is still growing.   Leaf clean-up is in full swing.  The team has been hitting it hard this week having to clean up leaves every day.  The cold weather earlier this month started the leaf clean-up season a little earlier than normal, we just hope that means it will end earlier.   While you are playing golf you will see a new trench on hole 17.  We had a golf cart get stuck in this area a couple weeks ago which has caused this wet spot to pop up.  We are doing some exploratory digging to see if we can find out where the water is coming from.   This week we completed mowing the native areas down and applied our winter pre-emergent herbicide to prevent winter weeds coming up in these areas.   Also this week we received our ...

This week has not been the best for golf.  Cloudy, cool, on and off rain and drizzle.  It hasn't been that great to work in either.   The team started off the week - and will most likely finish off the week - battling leaves.  It is a very satisfying job cleaning up leaves, but also can be depressing cleaning up a hole then turning around to see it covered up again.     Another round of winterizing fertilizer was applied to the short game area this week.  These late season applications will help fight off Spring Dead Spot for next year.   This week we started cutting down the high grass areas.  With our new Turf Tidy machine this process is a breeze.  Before we had this machine the team would have to cut these areas with a rough mower then hand rake all the debris.  The Turf Tidy not only cuts the high grass but also cleans up the debris in one easy pass.    The team was able to repair the failing drainage b...

The story this week was frosty mornings and windy afternoons.  The course is really shining with the fall colors setting in.  The crew stayed productive this week even with morning delays.   The crew started off the week working on weekly details.  With the cold weather and grass starting to slow down these details will hopefully start turning into bi-weekly assignments.   With frost delays starting earlier this year we were able to use the mornings to get some of our early winter jobs completed.  The crew took advantage of the cold mornings to trim back some of our ornamental grasses until the frost lifted.   Also with some of the morning delays, we used that time to catch up on some education.  This webinar was about Fine Fescue areas and how to better manage them.   Once the team was able to get on the course it was a battle with the leaves almost every afternoon.  The guys did a great job keeping up and, with less...

The week started off with beautiful weather.  We had some rain on Thursday but the week ended how it began.  The team had a very busy week for the second week of October.   On Monday and Tuesday the team was able to complete another round of aerification on tees.  We solid tined the tees with a half inch tine followed by a heavy topdressing, verti-cutting, brushing and then applying a fertilizer application.    On Tuesday morning we sprayed what I hope is our last application on fairways.  Here is Matt giving me the stink-eye after I told him that the application we did 14 days ago was the last one.   On Tuesday and Wednesday the team completed some small sod projects around the course focusing on the cart path entrances and exits on the back 9.   With rain in the forecast for Thursday we completed our fall fertilizer application on all fairways.  Also we had one of our irrigation contractors complete the wirin...