Winter Work. . .

Just a few more pictures of what the maintenance staff does in the Winter. Here is the process we use to cut  dead trees down. I would estimate that there are between 10-15 dead trees on each hole. That amounts to 180-270 dead trees on the whole golf course! The oak trees have been hit hard by the gall disease.

First we cut the tree down with a chainsaw. This is Rufino cutting the stump down on #12:

Then we will pick the logs up with the backhoe and then split them and use them for firewood. This is Steve Glynn performing that action:

Instead of taking the branches off site, we use the chipper and chip the braches into the back of the dump truck, and then dump the wood chips off site:

Finally we use the stump grinder to grind the stumps down.Here is Aurelio grinding a stump on #16:





Frozen Pond. . .

I just wanted to post this picture of the irrigation pond completely frozen. It is just a testament to how cold and harsh this Winter has been.

Shade on 16 Green. . .

We have had a shade problem with 16 green. The shade deprives the turf from the sun, obviously, but it is also impairs drainage. With water not properly draining you can have moss develop. I cannot show you the moss on this green but it is definitely the worse one on the course. The moss is really really bad for turf quality on a bentgrass green. So the Superintendent and I decided the best way to deal with this, was to eliminate some trees. Doing this will benefit the green in two ways,1.)It will get morning sun to the left and back of the green,2.)It will increase air circulation helping to dry the green out more. As I learned in school the most important light of the day, for grass, comes from the MORNING SUN! Here is a picture of the green with the tree line:

Here is a picture of it after we thinned out the treeline:

As you can see we took about 3-4 trees out there, which will definitely help this green be as healthy and as strong as our members expect it to be.

Powerwashing Equipment. . .

The number one question I get from family members, friends, etc. about my job is what do we do during the Winter? Well one thing we make sure to do is to powerwash the equipment. Winter is the perfect time to powerwash the equipment because most of it is not being used. We also want to powerwash the equipment to keep it nice and clean and make sure all the reels and moving parts are free from dirt and sand. Here is a picture of Edgar powerwashing some reels:

We also cut down a lot of dead trees in the Winter. I'll try to post some pictures of that task in the coming days.

Equipment Shed. . .

There was an existing equipment shed/overhang here and it seems that, when they built it, they never put any kind of roofing material on it. The roof was all rotted out and anytime we got even a little rain, it would leak. So we wanted to repair it so we could better preserve the equipment.

Here is when they first started repairing it.

The two previous photos are of the completed roof with the equipment inside.