Sunday, November 22, 2015

End of the Golf Season?


Last Saturday, we did our annual irrigation blowout.  We rented a 850 CFM air compressor and hooked it up at the pump house.  Jose first goes to each green and tee and uses a quick coupler key to get most of the water out.


When he gets mostly air coming out I take over and turn on every sprinkler head until we get a fine mist.


This process takes us about 8 hours.  We are a flat golf course which makes the job easier.  On a hilly course, water can pool in low areas which takes extra time.


The last couple of weeks I've been cutting down our wild areas.  If not mowed, weeds, trees and scrub bushes would take over.


One week after the irrigation blowout, we got 6 inches of snow.  It's supposed to warm up this week, so maybe a couple more rounds of golf can be played.
Last week, I was also able to apply our last chemical application to prevent snow mold this winter.  At Lansing, we spray our greens.  Courses with bentgrass tees and fairways also spray those areas.

Monday, October 26, 2015

Halloween Trunk and Treat


The Halloween Trunk and Treat is scheduled for this Friday.  Hayride, Bonfire and plenty of candy for the kids.


Guy Liptack supplied sandwiches, chips, drinks and pie at the ground crew appreciation lunch.  Rich Tabloff and his wife and Mike Ogorek were also invited.  Thanks Guy for your support of the grounds department.


We hired CS Turf again to aerate our greens.  With our small staff and an aerifier that dates back to 1991, this job would have taken a couple of weeks.  Renny and his helper were finished by 11:00 and we were done by 3:00.


After punching the holes, we topdressed with sand, dragged, blew off any excess sand and watered.


It's leaf rule time.  It's a daily job for a couple more weeks.  Free drop if you can't find your ball in a pile of leaves.


Be patient on frost days.  It usually melts off by 9:00 these days.  On these cold mornings the crew will be pulling out flowers and bringing in course accessories.  Just a reminder, this is the last weekend for the range.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Tee Aerification


 
We've started tee aerification.  We'll continue as weather permits.  With a small crew, we can only do 2 or 3 tees per day working around leagues and outings.

 
The new flags have finally arrived.  Thank for the donation from Melissa Kerr, The Lock's, and The McCall's.

 
It looks bad, but should only take a week to disappear.  I think some kids got a cart on Saturday during the fireworks.
 
 
This is Jaime, our newest employee.  He comes to Lansing with a landscaping background.  He can be found mowing greens, raking bunkers and weed whipping.
 
 
 

 
Since the fireworks celebration was rained out in late June, we rescheduled
 on September 5th.  The weather was perfect for a great show.



Saturday, August 1, 2015

Turn On The Irrigation


 
After 8.4 inches of rain in June, July ended up much drier than normal with only 2.4 inches.  I finally watered fairways last week for the first time.  Cooler temps are coming next week.  The days are getting shorter so we will need to change our start time to 5:30 am.  The crew will like the extra 30 minutes of sleep.

 
This morning before day 1 of the club championship.

 
Blue moon this morning.
 
Juan is an 8 year veteran here at Lansing Country Club.  He can be found mowing greens, tees, fairways and rough along with about anything else we need him to do.

Monday, June 15, 2015

Too Much of a Good Thing

 
Another .9 inches today brought the total since last Sunday to 5.15 inches.  We were able to cut greens and most of the tees today.  Fairways and Rough are getting very long.  It looks like Tuesday will be cool and dry.  Lets hope for continued dry weather.  Not carts for the near future.

 
Guy Liptack is almost finished getting us up to code with a new railing in the shop.  Thanks for your time and effort on this project.

 
Mike Ogorek has been catching catfish this past week.

 
In about a month, we should start seeing tomatoes for use by Chef Dan.

 
It's almost over.  This is looks like some new turf disease but is actually cotton.  I'm guessing there about 100 cottonwood trees in the ditch line.  These trees release cotton for about a month this time of year.

 
Not only are many people allergic, but the cotton sticks to machines and clogs up radiators that can cause them to overheat.  Its nearly impossible to get a nice even cut under these conditions.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Tony Lema Memorial, 3 Inches of Rain

 
In memory of "Champagne" Tony Lema, Jim Weidenfeller along with help from Jose, made this memorial on #7 tee near the site of his plane crash.
 

 
Never a dull moment on the golf course.  We are hiring a company to pull this out of the lake.  I hope to have it removed by next week.  It's much too big for our equipment to remove safely.

 
A killdeer seems to like nesting on #13 cart path every year.

 
Purple Martin.

 
The front entrance is looking better.

 
3 inches of rain this month has made it difficult to mow.  This is 6 days of growth on a fairway.  We normally cut them 3 days a week.  I haven't needed to run an irrigation cycle yet this season.

 
Thanks Guy Liptack for getting us up to code with a new hand rail.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Open for Golf

We're open for golf with carts as of Wednesday.  We should be ok for the weekend unless we get too much more rain.
 

 The first mowing 2 week ago.

 
Yesterdays warm weather helped green things up.  Today I mowed greens for the third time this year.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Wednesday was the first day for cart.  We got .35 inches of ran Thursday.  Just be careful where you drive.  All tees were mowed on Tuesday and all fairways on Wednesday.  Bunker work was started on Wednesday but stopped today because of rain.  Some course accessories have made it to the course.  Everything should be out by next week.
 
 

 
I'm hoping to attract Bluebirds this year.  This house was placed between 17 and 14.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Spring?

75 today, but back to the normal 40's the next couple of days.  No carts for at least a week or two.  Walkers are welcome.
 
 
First group of the year.  Last week Bong and Bob were our first group to play.  They played the front.  We've been pumping the back nine for several days and it should be ready for walking Monday.

 
Number 16 after pumping.  Below before pumping.


 
Pond left of number 2.  They outlet drain doesn't work as well as when I started in 2008.  We will try and get a trencher and put in a new line.  We'll have to be careful as there's an irrigation line along with wire between the pond and the ditch.
 
Overall we had a much better winter with only slight damage on some low fairways.  The snow cover insulated the greens from the extreme cold we had in February.  We also didn't develop any ice damage like last winter.  There was some mole/mouse damage on the putting green, 7 green and 8 tee. 

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Winter Work

 
Jose and I have been busy working outside in January.  We've cut down 8 ash trees this month.

 
This ash was from #8 and over 50 years old.

 
We've been burning much of the branches and logs in our fire pit.

 
The coyote has been around more this winter.