Green surface following a light groom last Friday

We have been keeping plenty busy out on the golf course, so I have not had much time to devote to blogging lately. Our main focus in addition to performing routine golf course maintenance tasks has been fairway aeration. It has been a slow process, but we have made some headway. So far, all of the par fours have been completed. We are currently working on hole 3. If all goes well we hope to finish hole 3 today. That leaves holes 7, 12, and 18. The par three fairways will be completed when we aerate approaches.

Sandpines has received some rain over the past few days and there is a huge difference between the fairways that have been aerated and those that have not. The aerated fairways have not had any standing water on them what so ever. On the other hand, the fairways that have not been aerated puddle up quickly and are extremely slow to drain. It is nice to see all the time and effort we are putting into fairway aeration paying off.

Jerry aerating and Thaddeus harvesting on 3 fairway

Last Friday, we took a break from fairway aeration to mow and groom the greens with walk mowers. It had been quite some time since we last walk mowed greens. Our triplex greens mower is not currently outfitted with grooming reels (they are in the process of being rebuilt), so using the walk mowers was the only way to get some much needed grooming accomplished. Check out the picture at the top of this post to see the green surface after grooming.

Jerry walk mowing 15 green

3 green basking in the sun

This week we were able to be a bit more productive with regards to fairway aeration. Fairways on holes 4, 9, 10, and 13 have been completed and the fairway on hole 1 was started. That may not sound like much progress, but considering we didn't even finish an entire fairway last week it was a huge improvement.

15 green

In addition to fairway aeration, we have pretty much just been focused on routine golf course maintenance tasks such as mowing, changing hole locations, maintaining and repairing equipment, fertilizing, and making minor repairs to the irrigation system.