Turkey Day.... Almost

This morning while out on the course I ran into several Wild Turkeys that must not know what time of year it is.  They were proudly walking around in full view for all to see.
It has been several years since we have had Turkey's on the property, so it is nice to see them once again.

Soil Temperatures

With the cooler weather finally here to stay the soil temperatures have had the bottom fall out from them.  As recently as four days ago the soil temperatures were still climbing into the mid fifties, whereas now they are holding steady in the low thirties.

This is particularly evident in the following picture that shows a graph of our soil temperatures over the last week.  The colors on the graph show different areas on the course such as greens and fairways.  It is interesting to note the large variation in soil temperatures in the graph between the orange line to the greens lines.  

The green lines represent two different greens on the course and the orange line represents a fairway area. There is nearly a fifteen degree temperature difference between the green and  fairway location that are no more than 450 feet apart from each other.  This temperature difference is due to the fact that the native soils are better able to retain the heat in them versus a green that is built out of  sand. The sand areas contain more pore spaces for oxygen which separates the particles from each other not allowing conduction for heat transfer.

From Blow Out To Snow Out

The day started off nice, but the weather was predicted to change by days end and it sure did.  We are into our second day of blowing out the irrigation system and it turns out our timing was pretty good to put the irrigation system to rest for the season.

Unfortunately we did not complete blowing all of the system out and we will have to finish up a few holes tomorrow with snow on the ground.  The hardest part will be getting the compressors around in the snow, but we will get it done one way or another.

Destroyed

You know its going to be a great day when the first thing you see on the golf course is this. Unfortunately last night was our final irrigation that would be run for the season and a deep soaking was done to the golf course. This was done in preparation for the irrigation system being blown out in efforts to saturate the soil profile one last time.

This made the course extremely soft and the Elk did an incredible amount of damage to this one hole. The worst part is the damage to the green which at this point in the season will not recover until next spring at best.  As usual my staff will be working hard to put these areas back together with ballmark repair tools and sand and seed mixtures.  

#11 First Fairway

#11 Second Fairway

#11 Green

Close Up Of #11 Green

Loading Up

As winter is approaching we are in the process of soaking down all of the southern facing slopes on the golf course.  This all needs to take place before we begin to blow out the irrigation system next week.

After blow out of the summer system these areas will be more difficult to maintain adequate levels of moisture, but fortunately we have numerous frost free hydrants located throughout the course.  These frost free hydrants are located every 115ft from tee to green so that we can properly maintain the golf course throughout the winter when no snow cover is present. 

Still Growing, Still Mowing

Today is November 1st and we are still mowing a lot of areas on the golf course that are normally done for the season. The weather continues to be warmer than normal creating conditions in which the soil temperatures have stayed in the mid to upper 50's.

These warmer soil temperatures can be found in the fairway and rough areas which are comprised of  native soils which tend to stay warmer than other areas on the course such as greens and tees which are constructed of sand. Temperatures in the sand based areas are at least 10 degrees cooler which has resulted in a significant slowdown of growth in these areas.