Behind the Greens at Caledonia Golf Club

Teaching an old dog new tricks. Finishing up servicing mowers. We are about ready to cut some grass!

A few pictures from the snow yesterday. Doesn't do much for golf but it just looked majestic the pictures don't really do it justice!

I haven't posted here in awhile its been a busy winter here at Caledonia Golf Club. We just finished up aerating tees this week and started with some tree removal. We have 200 on the slate to be taken out in the next year. We have a lot of areas that never see sunlight (which is not a good thing for turf). I will try to be more vigilant with keeping up to date with posts on what is happening on the course. Here are some after pictures of the aeration and the aftermath on the aerator, we found a few roots and rocks along the way. There are also some pictures of 4 of the trees coming out at 16 green.

Thanks Ryan Kraushofer for stopping by and flying your drone, I look forward to coming down to Westminster National to play a round sometime soon.

Tuesday and Wednesday we got the greens aerated. To a superintendent this is the day we all love to hate. It is a slow tedious process, but the end result is always satisfying and does great thing for the overall health of the turf. Punching the holes is the easy part. I went at 3 inch by 2 inch spacing. Most places I was pulling a 4 inch deep core that was 1/2 inch in size. After pulling the cores we blew them into the center of the green and shoveled them up. they we...re dumped in areas where turf is lacking. The byproduct makes for great soil for growing new grass plus there is already some established turf in the plugs. Add some seed and roll them over and you have some new grass. After the greens are cleaned up Topdressing is added to the green and drug into the holes. I went with a straight usga spec sand since my soil reports showed there is plenty of organic matter already in the soil. I also put down a Fertilizer at a rate of 1 pound of nitrogen and a half pound of phosphorous and potassium. This helps for a quicker recovery time and gets the essential nutrients into the soil itself. I'm a big believer that a healthy soil leads to a healthy stand of turfgrass. All in all the finished product turned out pretty well I think. Then with the rain all day yesterday it washed the topdressing into the soil profile a bit more. The cold temps this weekend will slow the recovery a bit, but I am hoping that by the end of next week I am mowing greens again and by the end of April they will be better than ever! Thanks for reading See more