Players Club Closed Day

       The Players Club was closed this past Tuesday for maintenance operations. The weather did not fully cooperate but we were able to finish all of our scheduled tasks.
       Our main focus Tuesday was applying Ronstar herbicide to the entire course minus the greens. Ronstar is a pre-emergent herbicide designed to prevent crabgrass. Vereens Turf applies this product with their own spreader trucks. We use this method because it is reasonable priced and they can complete the whole course in six to seven hours. Here are some pics of the fertilizer application.

      Although the fertilizer trucks manage to spread the course efficiently, there are still some areas they can't reach. Near the greens, around bunker faces and extremely wet areas are all places that we hand spread fertilizer to "tie in" to the bulk spread. We started this at 8:00 A.M. and finished up around 2:00 P.M.

       The pre-emergent application was the main focus of our closed day. However, we were able to accomplish some other tasks as well. We were able to hire an outside contractor to grind stumps. We had over 75 stumps to grind on the course, particularly #12, 13 & 16. We began the stump grinding at 9:00 A.M. and finished at 12:00 P.M. Here are some pictures of the stump grinder in action.

Stump grinder in action.

After stump grinder.

      We were also able to squeeze in some putting green maintenance on Tuesday. We solid tine aerified the greens first thing in the morning. We sent out three associates with three aerifiers and they finished around     10:00 A.M. Here are some pictures of a green after solid tine aerification.

       We solid tine aerify to break up the surface of the green. This aids in gas flow and helps to keep algae and other fungus' from forming. We follow the aerification with a green's roller and mowed the greens in the afternoon.
       Overall we had a successful closed day at the Players Club. The weather hindered our ability to accomplish some things, but we were able to complete our main goals with ease.