A Little Behind

It is no secret that this Spring has not been very spring-like. I did some digging and found some comparisons to where we have been in the past.

Here are some photos I took on April 19th, 2010 compared to some that I took today.

The Orchard in 2010.

The Orchard in 2018.

2010

2018.

2010.

2018. Make sure to look at that freshly painted barn, not at the snow.

If you look at the links on the right side of my blog, you will see the Growing Degree Tracker. This is a very helpful tool developed by Michigan State University that models plant maturity. It takes a base temperature and subtracts it from the average temperature for the day, ignoring negative numbers. Thus, the numbers always increase. There are many things that the GDD Tracker help turfgrass managers with. One of these is calculating Crabgrass pre-emergent timing. As you can see from the below graph, now is optimum timing for putting this out on your lawn.

The next graph shows where we sat one year ago.

Last year at this time, we were approaching the end of the window to apply pre-emergant. In 2014, we were visiting by the "Polar Vortex" and we opened Leslie Park on April 11th. We officially opened Leslie on March 30th this year, but it feels like this spring was worse.

Warmer temperatures are just around the corner though, I can feel it. Happy golfing.

More 1995 renovation photos.

To read more about the renovation project and CLICK HERE.

One of the major reasons to undertake the renovation of Leslie Park Golf Course back in the 1990's was to alleviate some drainage issues the course had.

This is a picture of #3 fairway before the renovation.

These exposed culverts were in the middle of the fairway. You can also see the ultra-modern cart barn that was immediately behind the green.

A large underground drainage system was put in across most of the front 9.

The culverts were removed.

The drains start at the pond on #8 and run through the low areas on #6, 5 and 4, before daylighting at a holding pond to the left of #4 fairway. It the flows through a culvert under the railroad, where it goes back underground across #3 and #1 fairway. This is on the left side of #4 fairway.

Here is a closer look at the cart barn behind #3 green as well as the new bunker to the right of the green.

March 2018 Weather Summary

March had an average temperature of 34.0 degrees, up a little less than 3 degrees degrees from February. The high temperature was 57.5 (March 18th) and was 5 degrees lower than then high from February. The lowest recorded temperature was 15.3 (Mar 11th.) Twenty-five days had low temperatures below freezing and every day got above 32 degrees for at least a little while.

We got  2.02 inches of rain at Leslie Park's weather station during March. The rain fell on 8 different days, with the largest amount coming on the 1st (0.67 inches.)  Five days saw more than a tenth of an inch of rain. That brings the total for 2018 to 5.36 inches.

Average windspeed for the month was 3.3 mph. The highest recorded sustained windspeed was 28 mph, on the 31st.