Fingers Crossed

     I took a very cold and windy course tour this morning to look at how things melted off the rest of Friday and Saturday.  Almost all of the greens at Wildflower are exposed and all but a few areas are disease free and looking to be ready for play in 5 days.  Despite our best efforts last fall, there was a little snow mold damage to 12 green, but with a little TLC once the temps come back to normal, we should be looking at a good "green-up" this spring. 

April 19th update

This was just one week ago before the sequence of snow storms that we have received...  Its starting to look like spring is never going to come to Wildflower golf course.

 As you can see, there is a substantial amount of ice buildup under the foot or so of snow that was here on #1 green.  Tolly, my assistant, worked the JD5200 with the Farm King blower while I was walking the perimeters with a walk-behind blower.  The outer edges of the green WERE ( I say this because we have received plenty of snow in the last week) starting to show good signs of melting the ice up off the crown of the turf.  The JD was too heavy to get out to the edges and we feared that it would break through the ice and disrupt the bentgrass underneath. 

     By Wednesday, Tolly and I had cleared #1, #8, #18 and the putting green by the Pro-Shop.  Thursday morning the snow started... And Friday... All the way to yesterday, which was Thursday, April 18th, 2013...  Beth informed me that this has been the longest winter since the 1850's, I'm not clear as to what EXACT year it was, but this record-breaking winter just seems to keep it's grip on our area. 

 

Hope to see you all very soon, the weather is supposed to break and get some days of sunny weather so were looking forward to a good melt and get the golf season under way!
-Aaron

Snow Removal on #1 PG, #1, #8 & #18 Greens

      By this time last year, wildflower golf course was mowing their greens and golfers were chasing after the little white pill...  What a difference a year makes! 
      Monday started out by contemplating whether or not to remove snow from our most covered greens on the course.  After Tolly and I took a walk around and did some digging on the greens, we decided it was time to help Mother Nature along and get our greens uncovered.  Some of you may have passed by the Country Club and saw that they have already uncovered their greens.  Our reason for waiting is simply that we have predominately bentgrass greens and bent can withstand much colder temperatures and survive much longer under ice cover than Poa annua.  I'm not saying that the country club has Poa greens... I'm just saying that is why we decided to wait and uncover at this time. 
     While we decided to uncover greens, this proved to be the easiest task of the day.  Using a walk behind snow blower and the John Deere tractor, we uncovered #1 green and saw that there was well over an inch of solid ice laying under the 20+ inches of snow.
     Tuesday, Tolly brought in his father's Kubota estate tractor (that's what Bob calls them) to help us get into tight spots and take some of the weight off the greens.  This Kubota is an amazing machine, clearing a path from the back side of #1 green down to #8 green seemingly effortlessly and we were able to uncover #8 much faster than #1 the day before.
     Currently, we are uncovering the #1 PG by the pro shop and #18 green.  We have a few cart paths opened up and hope to get up to the driving range shortly so we can start working up there and get the range open before the course. 
     We will check back in later to let you know what were going to do about all the ice we've uncovered...
-Aaron