MGC Re-Grass 2019/2020

Week 7 Recap Last week we were forced to go head to head with mother nature.  We seeded greens on August 16 th .  Since then, we’ve had approximately 7” of rain. Because of this minor speed bump, the majority of last week was dedicated to some minor grade restoration following some washouts last Tuesday, reseeding, and then installing covers to help protect our greens from the 1” of rain we received again this Tuesday. The covers will remain in place until Thursday, August 29 th  to help keep soil temperatures a few degrees warmer throughout this cool stretch of weather we’re experiencing.  Despite the challenging conditions we’ve had, our greens are now starting to germinate as planned.  The germination stage took a little longer than I’d hoped due to the minor washouts and the cooler temperatures lately, but we’re still in an excellent position heading into the month of September.  Now that the seed has germinated, the gr...

Week 6 recap plus a couple of days This is what 5 days of progress looks like!! Duininck Construction was on site last week doing their final grading on greens prior to seeding.  We were able to get all greens seeded Thursday, Friday and Saturday just in time for the 3” of rain Saturday night. Thankfully, we had erosion blankets over the top of our putting surfaces to help keep the soil in place for the most part.  As for the seed, we didn’t feel comfortable about it remaining in place enough to achieve uniform germination.   Therefore on Monday 8/19, we removed covers to allow Duininck to return and repeat their grading process to fix what erosion had taken place ensuring that our putting surface contours were within 1/10 th  of an inch from the original.  By Monday night, all green grades were repaired and half the greens reseeded.   We expected to have the remaining greens seeded Tuesday 8/20, but before we could r...

Week 5 Recap We spent the majority of week 5 getting all 35 acres of fairways seeded. We started on the fairways nearest the clubhouse and worked our way to the east side of the golf course.  The process took 4 days to complete which is why all the fairways are at various stages of maturity .   It’s amazing how vastly different fairways can appear that have only been seeded 4 days apart. After several weeks this disparity will not be noticeable. Short range fairway 14 days after seeding! It’s a beautiful thing to see 1 uniform variety across the whole fairway. Short range fairway with bluegrass stripped and prepped for sod to create definition between bent and bluegrass interface.  This will be done on  ALL fairways late this fall, early next spring to create a sharp line between the fairway and rough . Seeders wrapping up 4 Looong days on fairways! Duininck Construction returned Monday, August 12 th  to begin...

Week 4 Recap This week we finished the process of seeding tees on Thursday.  For those who have visited the club, you’ll notice the first tee has some noticeable germination.  This tee is a week ahead of the others. Once we finished the remaining tees on Thursday, we moved onto fairway seeding which started on 1 and 18.  The short range fairway was seeded a week ago Monday and is also showing some nice germination as seen in the photo below.  I expect to have all fairways seeded by the end of this week. We also continued the herbicide applications in the rough.  We’re scheduled to make a total of 5 applications at 3 day intervals and we’ve made 3 of them at this point.  The product is designed to eliminate any poa and bentgrass in the bluegrass rough.  Now that it’s taking effect, it really highlights how contaminated our rough was with these undesirable species.  The only time I’d consider bentgrass to...