New Uniforms

Last year we dropped our uniform company and bought our own uniforms for the crew.  We purchased 5 pants and 5 shirts which cost us just $500 more upfront than our previous annual uniform bill.  This year we are just refreshing two pairs of pants and two shirts which provides a huge savings for us.  These uniforms also look better than what were being provided before.

All the uniforms were purchased from Work Tools and Uniforms.Com.  We selected Olive Dickie 874's with tan Red Kap NMotion shirts.  They may look like a team of park rangers, but the guys do look really sharp in them.

Yum, Yum Donuts

Lately we have been witnessing a lot of donuts in our fairways.  Donuts refer to the green circles around the sprinklers with a brown ring approximately 15 ft outside of that.  We are doing some experimenting with different nozzle sizes and types now before we purchase 1,500 nozzles for the fairways.

We believe we have found two solutions, but we are going to evaluate a bit more before we decide to buy.  One solution is to use a different rear nozzle configuration from Rainbird.  This particular nozzle configuration doesn't diffuse the water as much and keeps the area around the head more evenly distributed (see picture below).

The other solution is to remove the small opaque colored diffuser in our current nozzle configuration.  At the moment there seems to be some improvement by doing this.  If this works, we could save ourselves almost $4,000 in new nozzles.  

The Water That Wasn't

The Lake FW's Course Log

Technology in turfgrass has certainly made my life easier, but this past week it pulled a fast one on me.

The 7th fairway on the Lake course started to appear dry about 2 weeks past.  Not that uncommon as that is one of the fairways we struggle with.  We did the usual procedure by turning on heads from the clock and increasing their time on the computer later.  When that wasn't working we bumped up the time on the entire fairway.  During this time we also hand watered the fairway with hoses and small portable sprinklers.  By the time we get through all of that we usually start to see some recovery, but not this time.


I was out this past Sunday and turned some heads on from the central control in the office before heading out.  As I was leaving the shop, the heads I turned on weren't running even though the computer showed that they were.  A false positive!

Even though the computer showed that the sprinklers had worked, they had in fact, not worked.  The norm for me has been for the computer to tell me nothing worked, but had in fact worked.  After a brief amount of investigation and part changing, the problem wasn't identifying itself until I bumped some station wires and everything started coming on!  What happened was that one of the station boards was shorting itself out on the metal frame.

In hindsight, I don't know how we could have caught it quicker, but I will be checking with our Rainbird reps for more insight.

New Equipment Arrival

Our first truck of new equipment came in yesterday and I'm feeling like it's Christmas even though it was 94 degrees yesterday.  From left to right, we received a new greens sprayer, SandPro 5040 with bunker pump and blade, (4) GM1000's for tees and approaches, and the 1298 fairway aerator.

We are calibrating the sprayer today and going out with it tomorrow on greens.  This was my most anticipated piece of machinery being that our other greens sprayer couldn't get more than 38 psi with the agitators off.  The engine also surged and when your spray pump is tied to the engine, the results are less than optimal.

Next week we should receive our electric CarryAll 252, CarryAll II, and John Deere 825i for the range

Greens Brushing

This week we brushed the greens to remove the grain.  I define grain as being extra leaf growth that is lying down in a direction that is usually in relation to the position of the sun.  In some cases this can effect ball roll and it is responsible for every putt that Johnny Miller missed in his career.  

We use a brush from T.I.P. that is pulled behind a utility vehicle as shown.  The brush stands the grass upright and we then mow the green after.  This is similar to what your barber does when you get your hair cut.  After brushing this week, we received 2-3 times the amount of grass clippings than usual.  

The darker side is standing up and
the lighter side has been cut off

While we are removing more material from the green surface, it should be noted that for 2-3 days following the brush, green speeds can be slightly slower.  Our machines are extremely sharp and efficient, but there is no way of getting every blade cut after the brush with just one greens mowing.