Pinball Alley

 That is my unofficial name for #7 Mountain now that it has been planted with 24 Coast live oak trees.  The trees were finalized this past Friday and it really makes you think a little differently on this hole.  What was once an easy par 5 to cut the corner on now involves a little risk/ reward.  More thought is also involved for the shorter hitters like myself because you don't want to end up behind the trees as well.

Next week we will scarify the 'highway' and begin to place the fence around the area.  By next weekend we hope to have everything wrapped up on 7/8 Mountain.

Spider Mites

You may not believe it, but I am actually glad to have spider mites.  That is what the official diagnosis was on our Pacific Coast Live Oaks.  The alternative for the browned out oak seen to the left was sudden oak death.

With diagnosis in hand, we had ArborWell out to spray the trees (3 dozen) in the parking lot and on the entrance road.  After a month, some trees still look browned out, but if you look close you'll notice green leaves reappearing at the ends of the branches.  Something you also notice is the lack of brown lesions on the top side of the leave which is indicative of the spider mite damage.

When reading the disease report, the report mentions that while spider mites are a problem, damage like we have is not typical.  I kindly responded, "Only at Cinnabar".

7 Mountain Course Improvement

The picture to the left shows the style of fence we will be installing around the hillside between 7 & 8 Mountain.  We will be doing 6 or 7 sections of fence with an 18" gap between each section.  We will also be planting more trees along the hillside. This area has become a popular highway of sorts and the cart traffic has really made it an eyesore.  The fence will keep the carts out and we will hopefully be able to regain the beauty it once had. It should also help make it into a legitimate par 5 by not being able to cut the corner anymore.  We hope to have this work complete within the next three weeks.

What the hillside should look like

The 'highway'

Deep Tine

Last week we were able to get all of the greens punched with our deep tine aerator from Toro.  It took 12 hours at 0.8 mph, but it is well worth it.  Since we started doing this last year our roots have been much longer than normal which is by no coincidence.  If you recall, I wrote an article in May about our roots, but I failed to mention that the deep tine is a big part of that.  From the pictures below, root depth and hole depth are almost equal.  


Aside from great rooting, we get better air/ water exchange through the soil profile and we also break up the small pan layer we have.  A pan layer is formed typically around 3.5" deep where normal greens aerators typically go down to.  When inserting a soil probe, you'll feel it get much firmer to press in at this layer and water will also have a hard time getting through that layer.