Sunday, February 26, 2012

Trees, Cart Paths, Weed Control and New Greens Committee!

Hello and welcome to "The Greenkeeper"!  Today is February 26, 2012.  Sorry it took so long to get this update posted but it took two weeks for my fingers to thaw from the final round of the Ross Retreat.  We spent most of last week planting trees.  You may recall I traveled to Liberty, North Carolina (home of Gilmore Plant & Bulb, Inc.) earlier this month to meet with Kris Spence (hand select the trees for planting as we begin implementation of the Master Tree Plan) and Kris was on site February 8th to select and mark the planting locations.  With trees arriving this past Monday (20th), Tuesday (21st) and Thursday (23rd) we actually started digging on Friday (17th) the week before in preparation...

Nathan Lance operates our 36" auger attachment with our Cat 277D to start the hole.

JR Bailey operates our backhoe attachment with our Kubota tractor to enlarge the hole to the proper size and depth.

The trees arrive.

Trees are off-loaded at the shop using a rented Telehandler (Cat TH580B).

 
Trees are planted with either the 277D or the Telehandler depending on the size.

We planted a total of 16 trees on the golf course this past week.  Ten trees were planted in the natural areas along the 1st, 9th, 10th,11th and 13th holes as landscape enhancements and six trees were planted as specific replacements for lost trees on the 10th, 13th and 14th holes.  Nineteen more trees are scheduled to be planted next week to establish a "tree nursery" for future transplanting.  The area selected for this nursery is to the right of the cart path along the 7th hole.

In other news, we recently completed our annual cart path edging (we edge the bermudagrass encroachment back every winter).  With several miles of asphalt cart paths the project usually lasts anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks depending on the number of workers assigned.  This sentence has no relevance to the cart path project but my high school English teacher would kill me if I wrote a paragraph with less than three sentences so this one is for Mrs. Wallace! 

Earlier this month we sprayed the golf course with glyphosate (chemical compound in RoundUp) to kill any lingering winter annual weeds (most notably poa annua).  Now we are treating with oxadiazon (chemical compound in Ronstar).  Oxadiazon is a pre-emergent herbicide that prevents the germination of crabgrass and goosegrass in our lush bermudagrass tees, fairways and roughs.  All this talk about weed control reminds me I should reprint last year's info for home lawn care.  I will upload it to the blog tomorrow so be sure and check back!

The Greens Committee for 2012 will be chaired by Stephen Woodard (SWoodard@mpvre.com).  The committee also consists of repeat offenders (TIC) Brett Boner, Ed Oden and Maury Rapp.  They are joined by newcomers Jack Kirby (new to me) and David Miller along with Roger Wolfe (GM) and myself.  Our next scheduled meeting is Wednesday, March 14th and if you have any questions, comments or concerns about the golf course feel free to express those to either me or Stephen.  Thanks!

See you on the course,

Matthew Wharton
Golf Course Superintendent

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