Comings and Goings

Well it's been a busy start to the season, and things are going well. It has yet to warm up yet, but that's pretty typical for this time of year on PEI. The turf department has been hard at work, here are a few of shots of the efforts...

Bunkers

                                                               #3 greenside complete

                                 #2 greenside (used to be one oddly shaped bunker, but now its two!)

                    #13 greenside bunker - We removed the old sand, cleaned up the drainage
                            and put brand new sand in. Now she drains like a bunker should!


Tees

                                                        #6 whites, another few days...

                                                        #4 whites, maybe a week...

 The plan is to continue with the renovations of the white decks on #1, #3, #5, #11, #13, #14, #15 though the summer and into the fall. We probably won't get all of them complete, but hopefully over the next couple of seasons they will all be done. The plan is then to treat the white decks almost like greens (fertilizing, aerating, topdressing) in the future in order to keep them viable longer. They receive about 90% of the play here at the Meadow.

                                     The new practice tee is roughed in and awaiting finish work.
                                     This tee will be completed within about a week, and then
                                     seeded out. It will probably be ready for use by the fall.

                                          The Fox Meadow range tees will hopefully be ready
                                          to go by this coming Monday. We aerified, topdressed,
                                          and fertilized it today, so over time it will start to look
                                          like a tee deck.

Flags


  A few people have been inquiring about the yellow flags around the course. I should have made it into a contest of some sort and had people email me what they thought their purpose was ( Don Chandler was they only one who guessed right). They actually mark out areas that we are going to let grow up into native grasses. With the fescue here at Fox Meadow we have been trying to let grass grow where it does not impede play, and mow it down where it causes hardship. Allowing the fescue areas to grow and a nice texture to the look of the course, and it also saves on mowing time.

                                                                 The swale on # 4

                                          These flags on #7 delineate an area that will grow up
                                          into fescue. The real purpose here is to slow down the
                                          flow of water coming down the hill, in the hopes that it
                                          can absorb more of the nitrates before they get to the
                                          pond. It is part of our ongoing strategy to combat the
                                          algae problem in the irrigation pond.