What a Great Summer's Day We Face Today!

What a great summer's day we face today! Oh yes, its not summer but 62 with heavy dew and fog and a high of 70, it will feel like summer being its December 12. The staff have been busy this week aerating rough as you might see some plugs here and there and red flags marking heads. Continuing to change holes weekly and mowed greens on Wednesday. Rolled them on Friday and have been chasing leaves as needed. We are getting close to the end on those pesky critters.

No major construction projects planned this winter. Normal Tree Management Plan work including pruning and cleaning up trees all over property, inspecting others and a few removals that take place every season. We do have a couple of areas where planting will be taking place as well as the nursery. We also need to begin to tree health improvement work doing some deep drilling of compost around some of our Pin Oaks in strategic locations and applying some humic acid to improve their overall health.

The new irrigation system is reaching 9 years old this spring. With new heads comes the raising of the new heads. As you might notice when and if you are down the middle of the fairway, the heads are sunk down by an 1" or more. As the turf continues to grow, this gap will become even wider making it unsafe for golfers, difficult for equipment to go over and last but not least the sprinkler head throw pattern will be disrupted by the difference in elevation. What has to happen? Each head has to be raised to level grade. There are some mechanical ways of doing this our there but the one's I have researched appear to be very difficult to use with a very tight soil like we have here at Glen Echo.

That means every head must be dug up by shovel down to the swing arm approximately 15"-20" or so into the ground, head raised and repacked. Down the center row of fairways alone we have 150 heads. This will be a long process. Wish us luck.

Have a great day, might see you on the course for a few minutes this morning but I've got to get home and clean the leaves up in my yard. Hurt my back at home about 10 days ago and have not been able to do much of anything. Feeling a little better so I will see what I can do outside. Have a great day.