From the Superintendent’s Desk

Marc Francoeur, GCS

Wow! September is already here! Everyone knows what that means, overseed is fast approaching! This year we will close the course on September 26 and reopen on October 17. We plan on dropping seed on the 26th, weather permitting and WE NEED VOLUNTEER HELP! I expect the volunteers will be helping load the seed, cleanup work and painting lines so we know where we’ve seeded; I don’t believe this will take more than a day and a half. I plan for up to seven volunteers but will make five volunteers work and I will be actively recruiting and will have a sign-up sheet with Dave up in the Pro Shop. Any help will be greatly appreciated, thank you. We will start with the greens and then move to fairways, tees and roughs. My team and I will start prep for overseed during the week of September 19-25; this is to ensure us maximum time for grow-in (watering seed) the more days watering the grass, the bigger advantage we will have for healthy turf. In this timeframe you will also start to notice the golf course going brown due to me backing off the water to also control the Bermuda grass growth (stunt it). This will keep the competition down between our winter grass seed (Ryegrass) and the Bermuda grass (summer grass) with both plants competing for the same water, sun and nutrients. During the closure, along with grow-in of the seed, my team and I will be getting to those pesky tasks that seem to always get pushed. For example, tee marker painting, tree trimming and erosion repair from last month’s storms.

We have already begun some of the erosion repairs in August, but as you know we had to wait for some of the retention areas to dry out before we could get into them. The tee leveling project on Nos. 2 and 13 went well and are coming along very nicely, and the yellow forward tees on Nos. 3, 4 and 7 came out great!