Punching Greens!

We are scheduled to start to start punching greens THIS Sunday Afternoon, all day Monday and Tues.  The course will re-open on Wednesday Morning!  If you want to get out Monday morning to play 9 holes the back will be open for play until 11:00 call the pro shop, Kevin

Green!

We are greening up with the rain we are finally getting.  Fairway mowers and rough mowers are out for the first time in months!  We have seed the areas on greens that struggled this summer in the heat and have great germination and should be back completely playable in a couple weeks!  Thanks for a great summer and I think we are all happy to see rain and Fall show up!.  Enjoy your day! Kevin

Greens Recovery Plans

Along with most courses in the area we have taken a hit over the last two weeks to our greens and course.  In the last 30 days we have gotten .90 inches of rain here on the property.  It has been a crazy hot and dry summer over all.  Less than 4 inches of rain over the last 60 days!  I was watching storms lately and wondering why we seem to have what we call the "New Kent Bubble" over us all the time.  What I have noticed by watching the radar like a hawk is that Royal New Kent sits between two rivers, If the storm come from the Richmond area it seems to split right before the New Kent County line and follow both rivers leaving us high and dry!

We are going to start the healing process with a brushing of the greens to remove some excess thatch.  Followed by a good shot fertilizer. We will also start a frequent very light topdressing schedule. in the next couple weeks we we start a light schedule of verti-cutting greens as well.  Then we will seed areas that need it.  Patience is the key to it all!  

The rest of the course is just SUPER dry buy should bounce back as soon as we start getting some good rain.  In the mean time enjoy hitting long drives of a lifetime!  Kevin

AERIFICATION

We are scheduled to punch greens this week but with the high temps we are definitely not going to do it Monday and will be day to day this week depending on weather conditions.  Call the pro shop for day to day schedule.  Kevin

Will It Ever Stop?

As you have felt we have been experiencing some extreme HEAT!   For myself it has been ruff thinking thinking that it is only July!  When you have heat in August you can almost feel and see a light at the end of the tunnel.  We are handling the heat OK,  We have been pulling hose and hand watering greens from 6:00 am till 6-8 pm to keep them at surface temperatures below 99 degrees.  We measure a few things every day in different ways.  We use laser guns to see the surface temps.  We use soil moisture meters to keep the soil at 12-18%.  We are pulling small cores out of the greens to see how the soil is holding water.  This week we used Cross Tines and punched greens to help get old moist water out of the soil and new water in.  We used a cross tine to get the results of the half inch tine but only get the hole of a quarter inch tine.

Cart Path Only

I know the words Cart Path Only are the three most feared and foul words in all of golf.  The turf health has improved in some of the fairway that have been roped off since winter.  The bottom of five fairway, top of eight fairway and hole eleven has improved tremendously.  We have been opening the holes on super busy days and big outings to help with the speed of play.  We are going to open theses hole this week for all play due to extreme heat.  We still ask you follow the cart path signs when to exit fairways!  We will continue to open and close the fairways as needed.  For all of you that have been patient while we improve the playing surfaces, THANK YOU!!!

A new Addition to help encourage cart path only request

Don't eat the Black Berries

Please do not eat the Black Berries on the back 9!!  We have started Spraying the native with a Very Strong Herbicide.    Thanks, Kevin