Rain Soon?

We did get a nice rain over the weekend about 1.7 inches that was well received into the soil but, we are in serious need of a great big ol storm that is going to put water in the pond as well.  We are still watering by hand 80% of the time and still in all out conservation mode.  Greens are rolling a little slower than normal.  Links style golf course greens require more water than normal american style tree lined courses do to the fact there is no help from other natural barriers of heat and wind.  We are using about 50,000 gallons of water per day just on the greens alone.  But good news looks like it is coming next week!  There is rain in the forecast and and lots of it! Keep your fingers cross and sneak out back at night and do a little rain dance!  Kevin

Still More HEAT

We are still facing heat with the little chance of rain this week.  The humidity and temperature are going to drop a little but that does not mean that is good for the turf.  With high humidity the turf can and will pull the moisture out of the air to cool its self down.  So 88 degrees with no humidity is worse on turf than 100 degrees and 70% humidity.  As our pond keeps getting lower we are restricting water to greens only and 95% of that water is coming out of a hose hand watering greens.  on average it is taking around 500,000 gallons of water to keep the greens alive per week.  I hope your staying cool and taking advantage of out fast and hard fairways hitting drives of a lifetime!   Kevin

This week

We have started to aerate tees this week to continue our push for a better playing surface on the tees box tops.  We are going to push hard on getting the Bermuda to close in laterally and heal from the small amount of winter kill and the large amount of spring dead spot we suffered coming out of winter.  We also starting spraying a large about of herbicide on the back nine fairways and rough to get them clean from the mass amount of weeds that have emerged from this moist spring.  You will see a slight discoloration but the turf will bounce back it's not a big deal. It all depends on where your from but some people call Bermuda "Wire Grass."  If it is not your desired turf its a weed.  It's a tough weed to kill!  But if you want it it's called "Bermuda Grass."  In short that's why the herbicide discolored the turf.  We will continue to get out when we can watching the heat, humidity, and rain storms closely. Other than that is has been a normal last couple weeks with mowing and typical golf course maintenance.  Hope you get a chance to get out soon the place is shaping up nicely day by day.  Kevin


Just a little humor on a hot nasty day!

Tackling the Heat

We are out keeping greens wet all day, the hoses are leaving the shop at 6:00 am and returning around 5 pm.  We are watering greens with hoses for the most part (about 90%) for a few reasons. 1. We can get water exactly where the green needs it and fast.  2.  We use a wetting agent tablets that forces the soil to take in and hold water on the mounds that regular water just would roll off. 3. And the most important reason is WATER CONSERVATION!  Throwing water with over head sprinklers puts water in place we don't want or need and turns into wasted water.  Have a great week and stay cool!  Kevin

 

Going As Planned

We are giving you the Full Monte when it comes to this week Aerification.  We have punched all the greens with 24 holes per square foot.  We used pencil size holes removing a lot of thatch and organic material from the top 1.5 inches of the greens.  I little quick math that is 2.6 million holes in 5 acres!  We are going in today and double verti-cutting sanding and mowing greens and will be open first thing Thursday Morning.  Have a great week.  Kevin

17 Green

Most of us have known someone who have died in a battle fighting for our or someones freedom.  For the last 5 years I have put a flag in the 17th green at what ever golf course I have been working at.  It is to honor a young man that I coached football at Rockbridge County High School years ago.  He left High School and played football for four years at Army.  Once he completed his time at West Point he he completed Ranger School and was quickly shipped off to Afghanistan.  There he was killed on his third day by a roadside IED.  His jersey number for his high school and college years was #17.  That's why the flag stands tall on the 17th green this weekend at RNK.

Don't Forget! May 30-31

We Are Punching Greens!

May 30 and 31

Basic Week Ahead

This week is a basic week for us.  Normal maintenance schedule this week.  Weather is on tap to be beautiful hope you get a chance to get out here and enjoy it!  Kevin

Don't Forget

This Week 5-8-17

We are back at it again this week!  Still spraying native with all intentions of helping speeding up play and keeping the height of the weeds in check.  We are schedules to do the last verti-cut of the spring Tuesday.  We will do our best to keep in front of morning play on the back and fall in behind play in the afternoon on the front. Bunkers will take us a couple days to get back together from last Friday's storm.  Other than that it's the normal week of mowing everything down and working for the weekend.  It's supposed to be a great cool week so hope you get a chance to get out and play golf!

Aerfication Dates:

Brickshire May 22-23

Royal New Kent May 30-31

High Expectations Get Great Results

When you set the expectations for your crew at a high level you get great results.  My crew has been running wide open for the last couple weeks getting the course in the best shape possible.  I have high expectations for myself to do all I can to keep a high standard of golf course conditions at RNK.  Getting my awesome crew to believe in the excellence of execution is starting to pay off big time.  This place is in great shape!   Keep it in the short turf!

This week!
 We did finish the task of Verti-Cutting greens today along with mowing rough, fairways, mulching spreading, spraying tees.

 Verti-Cutting greens is a huge task.  It starts by mowing greens as normal in the morning to help remove the dew and get the greens to dry out quickly.  Then the verti-cut unit goes out on the back greens first to keep in front of play.  The unit makes a mess when removing the thatch, so we bring in a blower to clean off the greens.  Once the thatch is blown off the green we re-mow the greens for a second time that day.  If we can and have enough people we like to roll them smooth as well.  If all works well we finish the back and roll onto the front just about time play slows down for the dayand fall in behind play.

We will continue to keep mowing and mowing along with starting to spray native areas to knock back weeds and briers starting with the most "in play" areas to help speed up the pace of play.

We will also be spraying greens with fungicide at the end of the week!

Hope you get a chance to get out here and enjoy this place soon!  Kevin

Verti Cut Scheduled For Monday

Verti-Cuting of the greens are schedules for Monday.  This low impact cultural practice allows not just only a quick way to allow the green speed to pick up but also removes a lot to the extra thatch and grass that causes disease and fungi to develop under the turf canopy.  Hope you have a great weekend and get a chance to come out and play in this beautiful weather!  Kevin

Riding Fairways

We Are Riding Fairways !!!!

Cart Path Only

We have had 1.5 inches of rain over the last couple days and getting too wet to ride fairways.  We will open them back up by Thursday. (FINGERS CROSSED) We also have opened and closed a few fairways that have been closed for the last couple months.  We have closed 4 and 8 on the front and 14 in the back.  Please help us keep good turf on fairways by reducing cart path traffic on restricted fairways.  Kevin

Irrigation

We are closing in fast on having the entire Irrigation System fully repaired and running well.  It has taken 3 years, a lot of time, patience, and cash to repair all the heads and electrical issues in the field boxes but we are 95% up and running.

 

Greening up and going full speed

Full Speed Ahead!  We a starting to fire on all cylinders.  Our biggest goal this year is to improve the turf in two areas.  Green surrounds and tee tops.  We have aggressively de-thached  the tee tops and dropped close to 40 tons of sand topdressing on the tees.  We also hit them with a 38-8-5 Super kicker fertilizer this week to get them growing and improve recovery time from divots.  We started to core arerate green surrounds this week trying to encourage new growth and relieve compaction of the high traffic areas at greens.

10 Fairway Drainage

We have Started to repair the drainage holes in 10 fairway.  We are finding  an assorted range of issues but none that we have not seen and are not fixable.  Some are more than other and each hole will take from 2-4 day to repair.  We are committed to repairing these holes the right way for not only the aesthetics of the course but the more importantly the safety of our golfers and staff.   Enjoy your weekend! Kevin

Native Areas

We have been out bush hogging native areas the last couple weeks.  PLEASE KEEP YOUR CARTS OUT OF THESE AREAS!  during construction these area were not top priority.  There are huge washouts and the drains are no different than the fairway but you cannot see them.  The native areas

 dangerous for carts and your help with this would be great.  Thanks, Kevin

Course Update 3-1-17

We are finishing up some jobs around the course that we have started.  Cleaning and knocking down the saplings and brush in ditches is a slow process but is getting done.  We are currently in the ditch in front of #10 tee and going to move to the ditch in front of the green tee on 16 next.  Jamie has been on the bush hog for about 80 hours the last two weeks knocking down high play areas and areas that we have a strong focus on keeping clean from weeds and briers.  We are also getting the course amenities ready we are painting the cooler holders and brought all the course benches off the course and finishing up a massive over haul of new boards and new paint on those as well.

 Next week we hope to finish up all the big spring stuff that we started when it was cold and Mother Nature has been wonderful (so far) and we have headed outside to work.  We will be spraying our crabgrass and goosegrass pre emergent next week on 70 acres of playable turf.

As you can see we are greeting ready for what we feel is going to be a great golf season in 2017.

Kevin

7000

We hit the 7000 visit mark this week!  The reason i started this blog 4 years ago was to keep you informed and help educate you on whats going on around the course. I hope you continue to visit we have a lot going on around the course right now and I hope to get all that stuff on the blog very soon!  Kevin

New CPO Holes

We are making a new strong effort in cart path traffic.  Starting this week we are going to start making two holes on each nine Cart Path Only (CPO)  Each hole will be closed for about a month to let some cart stress off the turf.  We have opened the bottom part of number five after a year of being closed.  The turf has made leaps and bounds in recovery.  Some holes on the course were not built to have great entrances and exits off the fairways.  This creates major compaction and intern we have thin turf or even spots have turned to dirt.  The decision to do this is just another way we can insure you have a great experience every time you play at RNK.  This months Holes are:  1,8,13,16  Please help us continue to give you great turf and playing conditions here at Royal New Kent by following the ropes and signs.  Thanks again, and I hope you great a chance to take advantage of this incredible weather!  Kevin

New Maintenance Staff

We are pleased to introduce three new staff members at seem to be doing a great job so far.  Brutus, Andrew, and Grace are a part of an experiment trying to keep Geese off the greens.  Saturday morning we brought out 2 live black labs and chased the geese away.  While they were gone we placed the three dogs.  Two of them are on 18 and one on 17 green.  We have yet to see or see new evidence that geese have been on either green.  Hope this helps. Kevin

CPO

We are Cart Path Only Tuesday, Wednesday, for now.  Sorry, Kevin

Open?

We are melting fast and have a couple greens clear today.  I would say at this point (Wednesday Afternoon)  we are 50/50 for Saturday and should be open Sunday.  Stay here or call the Pro Shop for more details.   Kevin

CPO

We have been blessed with close to 2 inches of rain in the last two days.  We will be Cart Path Only till at least Thursday.  Call Pro Shop for more info if your booking a tee time before the weekend snow gets here.  Kevin

WINTER WORK

We have been busy the last couple weeks removing saplings in the native grass and cleaning out ditches.  big differences in a couple holes.  Ten green and eleven fairway are stunningly different than the have been the last few years!  We have a little more to do and the rest of the winter will be largely consumed with bush hogging and fairway drain repairs.  We will keep you updated.  Kevin