The season begins!

With summer like weather starting to hit us, the golfers are coming out to enjoy the course. With 3 inches of rain this past Friday night, we will play check up to get the course back in shape and mowed out. On the maintenance side of things, we will be verticutting the greens on May 31st. Please have patience during this process and if you come upon a green that we are working on, either wait till we finish or move on to the next hole. I will be glad to give you an automatic par for that hole. If anyone has questions regarding this process, please stop me and ask, will be glad to talk to you about it. Also, the top tee on #6 is very close to opening. I want to seed it one more time and get in just a little more thicker before we open it. I appreciate all of you who have reframed from hitting from it. As many of you have know by now, I got a hole-in-one on #10 this past Tuesday and want to thanks everyone who congratulated me on that. It was my 1st one ever and I'm proud that it was on Juniper Hill Golf Course, my home away from home. That's it from now, so we'll see you on the course.

Updated maintenance schedule

The course is really starting to take shape now. The greens have healed nicely from the aerification and we are getting a consistent cut on the turf. We have scheduled the DryJect for our greens on June 7th. This has been a great system that allows us to push sand deeper into the soil profile. This will be the 4th time we have used this system and the the roots have increased by 4 inches since we started a aerification/dryject program. Within the next coupleof weeks, we will also make our first verticut on the greens to help with the thatch along with a light topdressing. This will most likely be a Monday project so we won't interfer with heavy play days. As for the rest of the maintenance programs, we are in a routine of mowing and getting our detail crew together and planned out to keep landscaping beds cleaned. If anyone has any questions about what's going on here at Juniper Hill, please stop me anytime on the course or if you see me in the pro shop. We'll see you on the course.

Rain, rain, and more rain... again.

This past weekend proved to be a 'stay inside and relax' weekend due to the amount of rain we received. Our rain gauge had 6". The course help up great considering, and by Monday, Juniper Hill was just very wet and sloppy. A little stream running down #17 was all that remained. Unlike some of my fellow superintendents, their course were underwater. Pictures posted showed just how lucky we were with the rain. Connemara Golf Course has one hole that has over 7 feet of water covering it. Cherry Blossom Golf Club has 3/4 of it's driving range under water and their ponds had risen up to 5 feet to the edge of some fairways. Eagle's Nest Golf Course spent an entire day on one green just to wash the mud off of it. Luckly, yes we were. My sympathies goes out to all dealing with the rain and hope for a speedy recovery. So for those who complain about being on cart path only for one day here, think about not being able to play for about 2 days at the place you call your home course and being on the path for the rest of the week.

Season is among us.

The course is coming along very well, getting greener, and the I am very pleased with how the greens have recovered from teh aerification. I wouldliek to let everyone know that I have erescheduled the DryJect from May 3rd to May 24th. This is due to the incoming rain that we are going to get during Derby weekend. I hope everyone can enjoy the weekend the best they can with 80% rain on Saturday and 90% rain on Sunday, my guess is there won't be a lot of people outside. But back to the golf course. I am very pleased with how the course is playing, we are doing our best to keep up with the rough, but most of the time, Mother Nature wins. I'm glad to see everyone out enjoying the weather and the course and hope I can maybe get a chance to play with the men and women one day. The season is among us and we'll see you on the course.

Aerfication finished/upcoming maintenance

Aerification is finally finished with success. I was very pleased with the results from it. I would like to remind everyone that on May 3rd, we will be DryJecting the greens. This process allows us to push sand deeper into the soil than what aerification does. Aerification gets us about 2-2.5" down while the DryJect system goes down as far as 6". With these two maintenance practices, we have greatly improved our soil in the top 5-6" in the past 3 years. This process will only take a day and you will be able to play on the greens that day. We will start off by closing the front side, just to give us a good start with no interuptions and by 12:00-1:00, it will open back up. At that time we will close the back nine until we are finished. If the process goes well the front could be opened sooner. But the season is upon us and things are starting to warm up, the grass is growing and greening up, and the golfers are coming out. I'm happy to see everyone back out enjoying the weather and the course. We look forward to seeing you out there.

Another aerification update

The front nine greens have been completed. Due to play and a scramble the following days, we weren't able to get to the back nine. This actually helped us concentrate on the front nine and get then healing and filled with sand better. The back nine greens will be aerified Monday, April 19th. The front nine will be open for play but the back nine will be closed. Thanks for you patience and understanding thru this necessary time.

Aerification Update

Well, things didn't go as planned with aerification this past Monday. Mechanical issues did not allow us to finish the front side greens. After working to get the issue solved, we will continue tomorrow, Thursday, April 15th, and finish the front 9 greens and the putting green. We have rescheduled the back 9 greens to Monday, April 19th. Thank you for your understanding thru this and we will have the greens back in great shape for the season. We look forward to seeing you at the course.