Happy Easter!!

What a beautiful day to celebrate whatever it is that Easter means to you!  To me it's a new beginning, a day to be thankful for all that we have and family to share it with.

We've had some decent weather in the last week and the golf course is 90% clear of snow.  That being said 90% of the bunkers still have snow in them.  We started cleaning up the mouse and vole damage early in the week then got a little snow Tuesday/night and nearly a 1/4" of rain on Friday.  That really slowed our efforts.  We spent yesterday pulling the tarps off the greens and got them all mowed for the first time this season.  As far as how we wintered, the fairways and tee boxes came out fantastic!  I couldn't be happier.  No snow mold and very little mouse damage in the "short grass".  The roughs have some snow mold damage and our typical allotment of mouse and vole damage..which is a lot..but nothing out of the ordinary for us.

Now the greens.  As was mentioned in earlier blogs, and for those of you that were around in February, we had a weekend in the middle of the month that we received nearly 1.5" of rain and it fell on 12-16" of snow and a frozen ground underneath.  This created a tremendous amount of ice on the golf course.  We found areas on greens that had as much as 2-4" of solid ice.  We were proactive and blew off greens early this year, put out black sand and physically removed the ice with picks and shovels.  It's a mixed bag out there on the greens.  The POA Annua (creeping bluegrass) that lives alongside the Bentgrass on our greens was really hit hard by the ice.  There a few greens that cleared more quickly than others than turned out OK and will recover quickly.  There are 2-3 greens that almost all the POA was killed and it's going to take some time and seeding to get them back.  That being said, we are going to aerify the greens this spring, as we discussed with the Greens Committee last fall.  This will allow us to inter-seed the greens that are struggling and promote some lateral growth.  We will be doing this before we open the course so it looks like we are on pace for a May 1st or 3rd opening, depending on the weather. Keep an eye out as we may try and open the driving range this upcoming weekend.  I attached a couple pictures of the better looking greens to get everyone excited.  Thanks for everyone's patience with the opening date and please don't succumb to the temptation to "poach" the course early as damaged caused from play this time of year takes twice as long to heal, more so on the greens. The greens need time to heal and we will putting out fertilizer to jump start them, so please stay off of them.  Happy Easter!!

Mowing #12

#13 Green after mowing