green repairs

Everyone knows that the extended heat this summer was hard on golf greens throughout the midwest.  Despite our best efforts, Lake Valley did not escape untouched either.  Today, Alex and his crew were busy stealing sod from the lower level of the practice green to replace the worst spots on about three of our greens.  They started today by patching in sod into the worst spots on #14 green, and will continue the process next week on greens #9 and #15.

Why don't they seed it, you ask?  Actually, we did.  Twice.  Unfortunately, each time the seed germinated and just began to grow we were hit with another series of 100-degree weather and the new plants simply weren't strong enough to survive.  To counter that, Alex decided to go with "instant gratification" by laying in sod on the worst spots.  Another problem with growing from seed is that you almost need to close the green to allow the new grass to properly mature, an option that really isn't available to us.

I'm posting a few pictures from Friday afternoon to give you an idea of what is happening:

click picture for larger image

In the above picture you can see some of the sod that has been stripped in, as well as some plugs that were taken from the outer perimeter of the green.

(Above) Alex is spreading a light coat of sand on the seams and lower areas of the patched green.  These will be broomed in similar to a very light top dressing.

Above you see Kevin and Kelly taking plugs from the back outer edge of the green and replacing small areas, while Alex is spreading a light sand dressing and Jay uses a soft bristle broom to sweep the sand in.  After his process was finished they ran the vibratory rollers over the green to smooth everything as much as possible.  On Monday the entire green will receive a full top dressing.

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