New Irrigation Installation

Sorry for the large gap between post, with the temps heating up and the irrigation upgrade, myself and the staff has been very busy keeping everything Mowed and watered.   As some of you have been out on the course you may have seen certain greens with holes all around it and me sitting in one of the holes. I am in the process of installing 110 new sprinkler heads to replace to old  water ineffecient toro heads.  Our system is a single row system from tee to green.  What this means is there is one head every 100 ft from the tee to the green down the middle of the fairway.  Once it gets to the green tthey average 5-6 heads on them. So if you play out here much you will see that our outer rough (anything that is not within a 100ft  diameter of a sprinkler head) is brown.  Since we have no irrigation out there, this is why we really stress the no carts in rough this time of the year. We are putting in Rainbird 700  turf sprinklers.  Installing these will allow the heads to  all come up and go off at the same time.  They will also put out a consistant and even stream of water on the green.  I started on Monday after everything arrived, and I currently have 5 holes completed. We also have nine new control boxes we will be putting in down the road so look for that blog.


 Old Toro Head.  Here I'm in the process of removing the head and cutting the wires that supply power and communication to the head.

This is the adapter that converts the old toro heads to allow for the new rainbird head to be installed on existing swing arms.  The bottom of apapter is NPT threads which means the have to be taped.  The top is called Acme threads. This have a gasket that sets in the heads allowing for no tape to be used.












The new rainbird 700 installed and wired.  its ready to be backfilled and leveled.












New Sprinklers in Action!  All come up at the same time and rotate the same speed allowing uniform coverage on greens.

Zoysia Conversion on 12 Approach

We are able to purchase 600 yards of high quality Zoysia sod from Meadowbrook Golf and Country Club.  They have a 3 acre nursery on the golf course which they allowed us to harvest from. About 5 years ago the City of Kansas City converted the existing fairways and tees to Zoysia. The only ones that were not converted were 12 approach 16 approach and 13 Fairway.  With this sod we were able to purchase we are going to convert 12 approach (which is completed) and 16 approach. The previous approach was a mixed bag of Poa, tall fescue, perennial Ryegrass and a hint of Bermuda.

Existing approach on #12

 We started by stripping off the existing turf to prep the area for the Zoysia Sod.  We were able to save about half of the sod which we laid in  other areas on the course. Once all turf was removed we brought in carts full of soil that we used to level any low areas and shaved down any high spots.

Removal of existing turf

Once soil was brought in we aerified the area to remove some compaction, put down a starter fertilizer and finished the grading for sod.  This process was completed on Tuesday May 15th.

Finished Dirt work

On Wednesday May 16th, we loaded up the sod cutter and 2 trucks and headed over to Meadowbrook Golf and Country Club.  We had to cut the sod, pallet it, load it on the trucks and trailer and haul it back to Minor Park Golf Course.  It took 2 trips to get all the sod needed for the area.  In all it totaled 9 pallets of sod to completed this conversion.

Finished approach with zoysia

We plan on doing 16 approach starting on Tuesday May 22, 2012, so look for upcoming pictures of that project.

Redesign of Landscape Beds

Some of you may have seen the redesign of the landscape bed by #18 green.  When I first got here this bed was completed covered in weeds and sucker trees and the ornamental grasses were scattered all over the place.  We decided to save what grasses we could and replant them in a better looking pattern. we then stripped off all the sod and edged the bed. We finished the bed by adding fresh mulch to give it a clean look.

 We also addressed an issue at the driving range. Due to the amount of golfers hitting balls and setting on the benches to watch, the turf around the benches took a huge hit. So we decided to take out the dead turf and replace it around the benches with a mulch bed that will take the traffic of everyday use. As you can see in the picture we still have a lot of turf decline we have to address in the future. Our plan is to come up with a solution that will allow golfers access to the driving range tee without having to walk through the grass to get to it.

Nursery Green Construction 5-1-12

As you can see the original nursery was in rough shape, so we decided to take our brand new sod cutter and strip everything off to bare ground.

After removal of original sod, we began the process of leveling the green with a box blade, hand rakes, and a mechanical trap rake.

The next step after leveling the surface we began the process of prepping the soil with amendments and seeding it to pencross bentgrass.

We then took the trap rake and set the seed by using the knobs on the tires. Final step was putting a snow fence around it to keep out wildlife and Golfers!

This is a picture of the nursery greens on May 10, 2012.

10 days after seeding

Greens Aerification

On Sunday evening April 8th we began the process of aerification on our greens.  We were able to get 9 holes punched and picked up before night fell upon us and we were unable to continue.  We picked up where we left off on Monday April 9th and finished punching and picking up cores by 11:00 am.  After the process of removing the material from greens we began topdressing sand onto the greens to fill in the holes.  After the sand dries, we were able to start to drag in the sand.  This process was completed by 6:00 pm and were able to open all 18 holes for play on Tuesday April 10th.  This is a time consuming process that no one enjoys but it is extremely beneficial to the health of the greens.

Its been a little over 2 weeks since we completed the Aerification of Greens.  They are recovering nicely from this and continue to fill the holes with new healthy turf.  Between these 2 weeks we were able to get some much needed fertilizer on them to help speed up regrowth and got out our fungicide application, Primo/Proxy Application and a wetting agent to help move water through the Profile.

We are off to a fast start to the 2012 golfing season.    I would like to start my first blog by highlighting a few changes that we have started here at Minor Park. Hopefully you have seen the new tee features, if so we removed all of the red pavers and edged around the ball washer and hole sign.  When I get my shipment of mulch in, we will be mulching those areas to complete the look. Hole #2 shows the finished product.   We began last week mowing our rough at the height of 3 inches.  As many of you know is has taken off very quickly and we are doing our best to get around as quickly as possible.  We also were able to get carts off path last weekend allowing us to get out our new signage to help direct traffic a bit easier.  We also added 150 stakes in the middle of fairways to help identify yardage for the golfers. On the cultural side we got out dimension plus fertilizer in our rough (grassy weed control), and also applied our second application of Primo/Proxy (seed head suppression) and Fungicide to our Greens.  We will begin aerification on the evening of April 8th and continue through the 10th   I hope you are enjoying the new Minor Park and I hope you play often.

Existing red pavers around tee features

                                                

Finished product on #2 Tee

                                                           

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