Fall sodding almost complete. Here's just a few photos of what we've done so far in the fall of 2012.

#3

#1

Just an update on a few things going on with maintenance over the past month. The weather continues to be mild and dry. Mild is fine, it's the dry part that concerns me since we are 16 inches behind for the year.

- Sod has been replaced on several bunker faces throughout the course.
- Part of the cartpath has been replaced on #5
- Pre-emergent has been applied to our rough
- Post-emergent has been applied to the native areas.

Upcoming  projects

- Roundup will be sprayed on the fairways in December. The main target is Poa.
- Cartpath repair work is being planned to fix damage incurred from The Midwest Classic.
- Details to dredge #14 pond are still being ironed out

- Fall aeration and seeding is complete. We will be starting our sod projects this month. This will include areas damaged by the tournament, high traffic areas and routine weak spots around the course.

- Frost delays are right around  the corner. Please stay off all turf areas until the all clear is given on mornings when we have frost. This prevents injury to the turfgrass plant when it is in a frozen state. This can be compared to breaking a popsickle where leaf tissue can be severely bruised or broken altogether leading to turgrass injury or death in some cases.

- We are still 12-13 inches behind on rainfall for the year, but we did receive 6" over labor day weekend and
a couple other 1/2-3/4" rain events. Let's hope for a normal year next year.

- Enjoy the the great fall weather! Winter will be here soon enough.

Midwest Classic 2012

- We finished our last fairway bunker as part of our sand replacement project yesterday.

- Please use the sand bottles on your carts to fill divots not only on the par 3 tees, but also on all other  tees. We've seen an increase in divots on our par 4 & 5 tee boxes. Don't forget to fill divots in the fairways as well.

- We have also noticed more ballmarks on the greens. Please repair your ballmarks to help keep the greens in great shape for your fellow members.

- The heat goes on. Next week is supposed to be another very hot week with temps well into the 100's. We hope to see cooler weather and rain soon. Until then we will continue to keep the course watered as effectively as we can.

- Just a reminder. In the summer months please drive your carts in the zoysiagrass fairways. The zoysia tolerates the traffic as well as the heat and drought much better than the fescue rough. Please avoid the native grass areas altogether with carts.

- We have 4 bunkers left for sand replacement. One on #4, 2 on #6 and 1 on #18.

- It's very hot and humid this time of year so take extra care to stay hydrated and drink lots of water while out on the course.

The wildflowers are blooming! Pictures of wildlflowers on #11 above and #4 to the right show new wildflower blooms. These areas are a little weedy which is to be expected. In the short term we will hand weed the areas the best we can and in the long term we will use pre-emergent herbicides which should take care of the problem. I plan on incorporating more wildflower areas into the native this fall.

Lots of much needed rain this morning (5-25). Three inches to be exact. Hopefully we can get carts off paths by tomorrow. We now have 7" of rain for the month which has made up for virtually no rain in April.

Bunker update
We are closing in on the bunker project. We have 8 bunkers left to replace sand. I'm hoping to be finished by the 2nd or 3rd week in June.

Fairway aerification
We are planning on starting fairway aerification on June 26th. This process takes about 10 days to complete. Hopefully the weather cooperates. We apologise for the inconvenience and we will try to complete the process as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Our summer staff is in place and we're looking forward to a great year.

I've had some questions about the color of the fairways recently and there are several reasons that this is happening. First, we had a very dry month of April ( .2" of rain for the month versus an average of 3"). Secondly we had frost Saturday morning April 21st following several cool nights in the previous weeks. Frost is very hard on warm-season grasses like Zoysia because it is not adapted to cold or freezing temperatures which cause it to regress to a dormant state, in this case yellowing. Thirdly, like every year at this time, the Zoysia is putting on seedheads. All of the energy that the plant has is going into seedhead production which makes it look weak. This will last 2-3 more weeks and then the zoysia should start getting it's normal color back. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Our weather has changed a bit more normal and has cooled off from two weeks ago. This has slowed down the Zoysia a little which is normal, but the cool-season grasses are loving it. The greens and tees are recovering well from aerification. Some rain would be nice not only for our newly seeded wildflower areas, but for the course in general. I always like to remind everyone at the beginning of every season to do their part and repair ballmarks so I'm attaching the graphic below which helps describe the procedure a little better.

Upcoming projects
- Greens and tees aerification April 2-4.

- Wildflower seeding left of #3 by butterfly house and left of #4 in native near property line 100 yds out from green.

- Continuing with bunker sand replacement in fwy bunkers. See below.

New bunker sand in #1 fwy bunker. To date; 26 bunkers complete, 18 left to do. Anticipated completion date is end of May, weather permitting.