8.8.25 Update

It's been a fast and furious 14 days as we've planted greens and are still in the early stages of growing in fairways. Lots of hours, lots of water, and lots of hoops to jump through but I'm encouraged with the progress and how the grass is responding so far.

Before any grass hit the greens, we did all our pre-plant products. A pre-emerge herbicide, insecticide, two slow release fertilizers, and an organic fertilizer were applied to the sand to provide nutrients and help protect against weeds and insects.

After we watered in our products, we were ready to start hand spreading the sprigs of Tif-Eagle bermuda grass on the putting surfaces. The pieces of grass were delivered in a refrigerated truck that was staged here on property for 48 hours to keep the grass cool. We would unload 1 container of sprigs at a time, spread them on the greens and once we were ready for the next one, we would swap the containers and continue on.

On July 24th, we sprigged holes 1-10. On July 25th, we sprigged 11-18, practice greens, and our nursery over on #9 Black Hawk.

The new grass required constant watering to help keep it cool and alive. Sun up to sun down those first couple of weeks we were running 4 minute cycles of water on our greens to keep the plants hydrated. As the plants mature and start to develop roots, we will start to back off the water.

One of the first tasks on greens once we feel we have some root development is to roll them to help smooth out the surface. We will test our procedures on our nursery over on #9 Black Hawk before we try it on the course. It's built to the same specifications as our greens on Shadow Hawk and was planted at the same time so it provides a good baseline for what to expect and allows us to get our routine / technique dialed in.

Our walk mowers have heavy drums on the bottom of the units so we use these as the first rollers on the new grass. The sand isn't quite stable yet to handle heavier equipment so this is a perfect solution.

Fairways were mowed with our Tractor and Trimax cutting unit. We like using this machine for the first mow because it has heavy and long rollers that help smooth our the fairways as the machine passes over the grass as opposed to our traditional fairway mower. We mowed our first batch of fairways that were ready and set the height of the mower at 1".

Seeing better root development as we start to dry out the fairways and the plant is starting to search deeper for water.

#18 Fairway after the first mow. Mowing the grass will promote lateral growth and help them start to fill in.

I like to mark areas to track progress of growth. I set 3 tees in the ground here on #18 Fairway where I had some leaves settle down into the soil. I tracked the development over the last week and I like what I'm seeing here...there are new grass plants running across those leaves and the soil, showing me the plant is actively growing and filling in nicely.

#14 Fairway was resprigged with additional plants to help that surface catch up to the other ones on property. We'll be adding additional grass plants to #8, #13, and #16 to help fill in voids on those fairways. Once we get to September, any additional voids we feel we need to fill in will be done with sod.

I love the color and look of the zoysia tees right now. We've recently dropped the height of cut and are currently topdressing them again to help firm up the surface even further.

I recruited Justin to hit some golf balls off of the range tee to see how quick this Tif-Tuff Bermuda recovers from wear compared to our old 419 bermuda grass.

I've got a similar spot over on the Black Hawk Range Tee where I'm tracking progress on the older 419 bermuda grass. Always fun to learn and compare these different varieties of grasses out in the field.

Chef Gustavo treated our crew this week with a pulled pork taco feast. Our Agronomy Team has been grinding away this summer so it's nice to take some time to feed and thank them.

Thanks for reading and being a member.

Willie