Why I Am In This Business

I rarely enjoy talking about myself, but when I saw this picture I took on Tuesday, it reminded me of the day I fell in love with this profession.

I was at Cattails Golf Club in South Lyon, MI and I was spraying fertilizer in the fairways for the first of many times in my career. My boss had me put out 46-0-0 and iron. I had just recently turned 18 and I got my spray license on my birthday and hadn't a clue to these two products other than they were fertilizer's. I had started spraying at 3am and had finished by 8am. My boss, Doug Palm, calls me on the radio to come take a look at the first few fairways I sprayed. Low and behold, they had already changed colors in a matter of hours. How cool was that I thought! Unfortunately I hadn't sprayed too accurately and I had stripes everywhere, but nonetheless, the power I had.

Fast foward to Tuesday of this week and you can see we sprayed number 1 mountain on the right with iron and had yet to spray number 1 lake. This was only 3 hours after we sprayed!

You have to realize that all Superintendent's are control freaks in one way or another. The funny thing is though is that we are trying to control Mother Nature most of the time and she can be a real son of a &^%&^!

That was a bit over 12 years ago and to still have the same feeling about this profession tells me I got lucky and found the right career.

5 Canyon & 8 Lake Tee Are Open

If you haven't been here for a week or so, we have now opened the tees on 5 Canyon (pictured) and 8 Lake. They were severely crowned from 12 years of divots being filled with sand and seed. I have talked to other superintendents about avoiding crowned tees, but everyone tells me that it is inevitable and you must rebuild them every so often.

Along with the two tees we just opened, we are currently doing 5 Canyon hawk tee.

Golden Eagle

This year we have seen an abundance of wildlife on the golf course including squirrels, meadow mice, owls, rabbits and most recently Golden Eagles. The pictures were taken last week behind 4 Mountain green. I just happened to be riding around the golf course with two fellow superintendents (PJ Kaner, Santa Teresa and George Young, SJ Muni) who were able to ID the bird. I don't know much about birds, but the golden eagle is very impressive in person.

CHGC Maintenance Gets Internet!!!

After almost five years, the maintenance building now has internet. Thanks to the help of Hawking technologies antennas and routers, we are really cruising on the net.

I must say that I feel a bit naughty being on the net down here after so much time being spent in the clubhouse, but I am sure I'll get over that feeling. I have already found a great program, logmein.com, for the irrigation computer that allows me to call in and make changes or check the status from home at very fast speeds. Maybe this program will convince my wife how valuable an iPad would be!

Hope to have some more posts for everyone a bit more often.

Fill 'em Up

We just completed another very succesful aeration and I have some great pictures and a video to share with you.

Last year I mentioned that we now blow the holes into the sand vs. dragging them in. The first pic shows how we blow the sand into the middle of the green. The second pic shows us blowing the sand back to the outside like splitting the red sea.

With all of this work, the greens go from looking covered in sand to beautifully filled aeration holes.

Below is a video of me making one pass with the blower to give you an idea of how we are doing it. You may have to turn your sound down as the blower is pretty loud.

The Preparation Starts

For what you may ask? Every superintendent's favorite time of the year of course; aeration. We start aerating the ninth of this month (you won't be affected until the 10th), but we start our pre-fertilization program now. The idea is to get the grass growing right now so as soon as we get the holes in the green, they will already be in recovery mode. The extra growth makes them slower obviously, but who wants to look at holes filled with sand!?

We have also aerated the collars around the greens. With our new strategy of blowing the sand into the holes vs. dragging the sand we end up with a lot of sand on the edges of the greens. With the holes in the collar, the extra sand now has a home to go to.

If you want to see what they will be like two weeks later, come check out the practice greens. They have responded wonderfully and they are rolling well.