Waiting Game

I was hoping we would have the golf course all ready for winter, but the snow and cold temperatures that have been with us for the last two weeks have thrown a wrench into our plans.

Header for compressors

Q.C left running for a bit

We completed the irrigation system blowout on the 23rd and 24th of October, with about 5 inches of snow on the ground. For the most part everything went as planned, as we had no issues with sprinkler heads freezing and we could view all heads popping through the snow. Our biggest challenge was maneuvering around the course, especially on the back, due to slippery conditions and large snow drifts. Thank you to Myles for allowing us to use his quad for blowout, as without it we would have never been able to complete the back nine blowout. For blowout we use 4, 185 cfm compressors from a local equipment rental company in series. All compressors are connected together via a header which then connects to the irrigation system with a larger hose. Our front and back nine irrigation systems are completely separate from one another except at the pump house, so this configuration allows us to use smaller compressors to get blowout done. During blowout our goal was to maintain a pressure around 40-45 psi, this was easy attainable with our compressor configuration.

Andrew running through controllers

Starting off with a little slideshow in the Tournament Center

On October 11th we also had the Olds College Turf Management students come tour the golf course. It had snowed the day before so most of the course was covered with a blanket of snow. I really enjoyed the opportunity to answer questions and have conversations about being a young superintendent at a smaller facility, as well as the specific challenges we deal with at Dinosaur Trail. They also took the opportunity to tour the golf course, but most of the interest was to see our unique back nine. I look forward to having future classes visit the course, hopefully on a nicer day when we can actually see the turf!

Andrew and myself with the students

 In the next few days we plan to start clearing greens of snow to start our final winter prep for greens surfaces. We still need to apply our final fungicide application as well as anti desiccant, before we finish with a heavy topdressing. The back nine greens will also have permeable greens covers installed on them along with some ridges getting extra protection of cocoa matting. Our team needs around 4 days to complete these tasks, so hopefully the next 7 to 10 days will give us the window we need to properly prepare the greens for winter. Once these tasks are completed I will be able to stop worrying about putting the course to bed and focus on completing my budget for 2013.