Removing Trees to Enhance the View

This week our staff removed the trees planted in the island between #9 Green and #10 Tee box.  The Grounds Committee as well as the Board of Directors agreed to have these trees removed to help enhance the view from behind the Clubhouse, and the currently under construction Mountain View Lounge.  These trees consisted of weeping cherry and maple trees, and were planted by the Club in 1997.  As the trees have grown larger over the years they have completely blocked a large part of the view of hole #9, and were only a few years of growth away from blocking the beautiful view of Kennesaw Mountain.  These pictures above were taken from the new Mountain View Lounge, and as you can see removing the trees helped to enhance the view of the golf course as well as the mountain landscape.  For the time being we plan to sod the area to bermuda grass and it will play as "rough".  In the future if the Committee decides to add something in the island such as low growing plants or a water feature it will be very easy to remove the grass.   We are also working on up-lighting a few of the large oak trees in the distance so at night the view from the back of the Club house is greatly enhanced!  More to come on that in the future!

Fairway Verticutting

This week was a big week for our Grounds staff!  The large Verti-Cutter came to help remove thatch and old growth in the fairways.  This process is very beneficial to help the grass grow much tighter together as well as reduce the "grain" or directional growth it develops over time.  The equipment gets its name Verti-Cutter because it is doing what is called "Vertical Mowing", a system of small blades that are straight up and down and slice about 1 inch deep into the grass profile.  Take a look at the picture below for a better idea:

This is a good look at the Thatch and Organic Material removed by the Verti-cutter

This machine does a great job of removing the old thatch and material.  Another great benefit from the slicing and verticutting is all of the stolons and rhizomes, (which are above ground and in-ground roots of the turf) that are cut will grow a new leaf blade and make for a denser turf canopy.  Mowing afterwards is always a little easier because the grass thinner and easier to cut.  We do this process during the summer time of year because the grass is growing very rapidly and it will only take about 2 weeks to fully recover.  Here are a few more pictures of what it looks like during the process.  Trouble with the machine, combined with wet weather only allowed us to finish Overlook and Lake View fairways.

Sign Update

The new sign on Stilesboro road has been built, but it has taken forever for the sign to be installed!  This is because the saleswomen with DeNyse signs was terrible and fired from her job months ago!  I learned this news from the owner of the company, who assured me that he would help us get the sign finished up as fast as possible.  We are waiting on the County to approve our final sign design, and then we will have it completed!!!!

Shade issues

Now that the grass has mostly greened up and looking like summer time, we can finally see what damage the winter left us to deal with.  One area of turf in particular that is quite thin and unsightly is the grass around the greens on holes #13 and #15.  This grass is zoysia grass, and while it does like the shade more than bermuda grass, it still needs plenty of sunlight to survive and grow correctly.  These areas around the greens on #13 and #15 are the same areas we fight each year coming out of winter dormancy.  The only way to solve the problem for good it to remove the trees, but in some instances we do not own the land the problem trees grow on.  Take a look below at the pictures to see the shade issues I am talking about.

These pictures of #15 green were taken at 11:15am.  You can see the shade line across the green, and the whole right side of the green (as you play the hole) is still in shade.  The sun rises each day before 7:00am, so that is 4 hours of daylight this area of the green and surrounding turf is losing each day.  The putting green, on the other hand, receives full sun throughout the whole day, and the grass around the green is full and healthy.  There are other factors of course which cause these areas to struggle each year, but lack of sunlight is predominately why we see issues each spring when the grass greens up.

We have sod coming for these areas next week and will get it repaired quickly so it can grow-in and become healthy this summer!

Azaleas on #17 starting to bloom!

A few years ago our grounds staff, along with a generous donation from the LGA, took on the project of cleaning up the tiered area in front of #17 tee.  After removing the overgrown shrubs and vines that were originally planted there, we stained the walls and prepared the beds for the new azaleas.  Here is a look at the site before we planted anything.

Once we had the wall at this stage, we were ready to plant the azaleas.  We chose a mixture of different azaleas to plant and everything looked good.  Unfortunately, we had a very strong freeze in November that Fall and it killed 90 percent of our plants. We were not satisfied with the results, and decided to re-plant the entire azalea bed with a different variety of azaleas.  Fortunately, no more problems since we replanted and the plants are starting to really look good.  Take a look at the picture below to see how much they have matured this Spring!

It is a little hard to see how well they have grown, but you can see the colors of the Spring blooms!  We will keep grooming this area until each Spring is shows us beautiful foliage like this!

Time to Fertilize!

Today we had the big truck come to fertilize the entire golf course!  The fertilizer we put down is a slow-release fertilizer that will feed the grass for 5 months.  We put it down now so that the grass will have it to feed on all summer long!  With the golf course greening up much earlier this year it should be great timing to get the fertilizer down on the ground and in the soil for whenever the grass would like to use it!  

Heavy Rains Last Week

If you were in the metro Atlanta area last week you are well aware of the heavy downpours we received last Monday and Wednesday.  On Monday, we had heavy downpours of rain that totaled 1 inch in about an hour and a half.  On Wednesday, a much heavier line of storms came through and brought another 3.1 inches of rain to an already saturated golf course.  The storms Wednesday also included winds that were strong to enough to topple a large pine tree on hole #1.  This weather trashed the golf course by washing out the bunkers, blowing debris from the trees everywhere, and making the grass impossible to drive on without doing damage.  Take a look at some of the pictures from the aftermath below!


Just to put it into perspective the 4 inches of total rain this week is more than we had from August 1st to November 28th 2016!  That is more rain in a 3 days span than almost 4 months last Fall!!