Catching up

The fall has been busy at the golf courses for the City of Ann Arbor. I want to apologize for not keeping up with blogging more. I will make up for it by offering up a quick summary of some of the projects we have been doing.

New Practice Green for Leslie Park

At the beginning of September, we stripped this area of rough behind #1 tee.

We added 60 tons of sand mixed with top soil.

Shaped it and seeded it with bentgrass. This will be an additional practice putting green. 

Five days later, the grass was starting to germinate.

Two weeks after seeding, it looked like this. We have now mowed it three times at 0.400 inch. In the spring, we will slowly bring it down to our normal green cutting height of 0.125 inch.

Level and expand tees at Leslie Park

Some of the smaller tees are getting noticeably mounded in the center. This comes from golfers taking shots from the same spots and maintenance filling the divots with sand and seed. After 20 years, the center of the tee may have grown by 6 or 12 inches. 

This forward tee on #9 was stripped of sod and leveled.

Sod from a different tee was laid out on the level surface.

It looks like we will only get to the two forward tees on #9, the white tee on #18 and the right side tee on #7 this year.

Rock wall on #7 tee at Leslie Park

As part of the leveling of #7 tee at Leslie, we are also trying to expand the usable teeing area on the back of this tee. In order to accomplish this, we are adding a rock wall, which will allow us to build up the back corner of the tee.

Geo-textile fabric is laid out behind the rocks to keep erosion to a minimum.

Cart paths and rock walls at Huron Hills

New cart paths were added to #13, 14 and 15 at Huron Hills this year. They tie into the path that was put in last year on #12. In order to keep to contours of the holes as close to original as possible and still have a fairly flat path, rock walls were also put in here.

#13 at Huron.

#15 at Huron.

Fertilizing Oak by #5 at Leslie

This oak on the right side of #5 fairway has been declining in recent years. Last year, we pruned all of the dead wood out of the canopy and de-compacted the soil around the tree.

We had a leaf tissue analysis done this year and found out that there were some micro-nutrients the tree was lacking. Micro-nutrients are nutrients aside from the big three of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium.  Here the arborists are preparing to inject the nutrients into the tree's bark.

A close-up view of the system of tubes and injection sites.

Greens aerification and top-dressing.

During aerification, I would always break tines on the front, left corner of #2 green at Leslie. After doing so again this year, I decided to dig up the rock that we kept hitting.

This little guy will love it's new home in the rock wall on #7 tee.

Fall Project Update

We finished aerification on the Huron hills greens today. We hope to start Leslie next week. We have aerified some of the tees at Leslie and hope to continue "plugging" away at those. (That is an aerification joke.)

We had a tree company come in to trim up one of the oaks on #5 as well as cable the three parts of the tree together. The large oak on the left of the hole was developing a split and in order to cause less stress on the joint, they took some of the heavy limbs off. After the limbs were removed, you do not notice a difference, but the weight reduction was significant. Hopefully, this tree will be around for several decades.

How many climbers can you find in the tree? There are 3.

We have also built a new forward tee on #11. The tee that was on the far side of the wetland was too small and also accentuated the dogleg. This made the hole more difficult than it should be from the forward tees. The new tee will give players a straighter shot to the hole.

Half the sod in place.

From this view, you can see down most of the fairway.

Another project we have started was on #16. When the Traver Creek Project was going on, the approach on #16 was used as a haul road. Hundreds of dump trucks full of silt from the pond were hauled over this portion of the fairway and dumped on the left side of #14. When the project was done, this area was supposed to be excavated and filled in with topsoil. If you have played during the summer since the project, you probably noticed that this area was never looking good. After digging it up and examining the soil, it looks like the compacted soil was never removed. It was just graded out and two inches of topsoil spread on top. 

We excavated the area down 4 inches. The we roto-tilled the compacted soil.

Topsoil was dumped onto the area and spread around.

The next step is to lay some bentgrass sod over the leveled topsoil. It should be fully grown in by next spring.