August Update

Pond on three, Aeration and Autonomous Mower

Hey Folks!

We are in the heat of the summer! August heat is here and looks like it will be for a bit. Overall, I’m quite happy with the progress of the golf course, and very proud of the job the team has done to bring us along from a tough winter.

Having said that we are not resting on our laurels. Aside from our very full regiment of general maintenance, we have almost completed the all of the greenside bunkers edging and will turn to the fairways bunkers before losing staff to school. We have also spent some time clearing brush on the creek edges to help with visibility and general tidiness.

The greens are generally in pretty good shape, but I’m still not happy with some sections. 3, 7 and 14 are primarily are our main concern. To help finish our the recovery we have halted the applications of growth regulators to the back of 3, 14 and the small patches on 7. This will cause a bounce of growth to those portions of the greens, which will in turn slow down ball roll on those areas. In addition to this on Friday we will be aerating those areas with the 1/4 inch tines to encourage root growth and water penetration. We won’t be topdressing the green so recovery should be pretty quick. Hopefully this spurs on the remaining areas to full recovery and we can get back on the growth regulators.

We will probably have to sod the small spots on 7 but we will wait until the heat abates as sod that short will be difficult to keep healthy.

If you’ve been at the course lately you have seen out latest additions, the Kress autonomous mowers. We currently have three of the units, working on 1, 2, 3, 7t, 9, 16t, 15, and 14. Lots of questions so I will point form the answers:

1. Yes these are the actual size of the units. We do not have larger units coming. We have two different models working on the golf course, one with a 7 acre and two with 3 acre capacities. Each will cut their capacity in 48 hours.
2. The units charge for 2 hours and return to the chargers for 30 minutes. They do not run out of charge, but may shut down if get trapped or stuck. We have “trained” them to mow certain zones of the golf course and they are still learning these areas.
3. No you should not help the unit. In order to train them effectively we need to see how or why they got stuck or off track. The unit will send a message in real time to our application when there is an issue. Picking the unit up will not actually help, but thanks! It is hard to resist!
4. Yes these units (when we get the kinks worked out) will run 24-7. They run at night and during play. There is no oil, gas, diesel or any other grass killing fluid in them. They weigh a fraction of the rough units, have very cost effective parts and are very quiet.
5. Yes they have sensors that allow them to find their way around things, however they may get hooked up on a rake. For the time being we ask that you place the rakes in the traps after using.
6. Yes, Kress has smaller more entry level units for home use as well.

We’re happy with the progress and quality of cut so far, but the mapping process is just that, a process. I would like to see more of these on the golf course in the future, but lets see how the summer finishes out.

The work has started behind three green to build the attenuation pond for the remainder of the subdivision. You have seen the stakes behind and through the green but rest assured this is not the line of the pond edge, but rather an offset reference for where it will begin. The line will be about five to six meters out from behind the green following the contour of the back slope. Here’s the before picture from last week.

As of this week the construction crew has removed most of the stumps and will begin actually digging the pond before too long. This is a large scale earth move and will take a considerable amount of time to complete. Ill be posting info about the complex as it progresses, but if you have any question feel free to reach out. If you see Scott Hill about you could also ask him, he designed the whole project!

Thanks and stay tuned, more to come!

Adam