Punching

 Greens were punched last Monday.  We started by using the dryject machine. If you want to know what the dryject machine does click HERE.................

Immediately after the dryject process we rolled the greens and then punched them with the traditional solid tine.  Immediately after that we applied more sand and then drug the sand into all the holes.

Luckily we had a good day of weather during this process and this is how they looked when we finished the day.

We incorporated a lot of sand and the dryject process relieved some deep compaction that we normally can't get to.  As expected the greens are draining well and we know this because we've had a lot of rain since we punched them.  That rain has washed all the sand in nicely and the greens look very good today but all the rain has really caused us some problems with our spring aeration.  The forecast is for more rain this week and we are running out of time to punch fairways.  

On top of that we just got hit by a serious wind storm on Friday so now the course is covered in debris.

This week we will have to focus on cleaning up after the storm and getting the place mowed down and hopefully have it in decent condition for Thursdays Pro Am.  So again it looks like punching all the fairways is simply not feasible.  I have never been more frustrated with the spring weather. Typically we are almost finished with aeration at this time and to date all we have punched is the greens.  My hope right now is to find time to just punch some of the weaker fairways like #2 and #5.  These fairways are really weak due to excessive shade and the very cold winter so punching them will hopefully stimulate some growth and improve the turf density.  

If you were around this last week you may have noticed the excavation on the left of the first fairway.

What we're doing there is building the EVA (Emergency Vehicle Access) for the new performance center.  This is a building requirement and it means the loss of one of the parking stalls in the main parking lot.

The excavated area was back-filled with a gravel mixture which we compacted very tightly. 

On top of the compacted gravel we installed this plastic mesh stuff which can withstand the weight of any type of emergency vehicle including a fire truck.

On top of that we installed sand.  The final step will be installing sod so in the end it wont really look like we built a road there at all.