Greens are looking good

#15 Green 4-12-16

After receiving 30" of snow the second half of March we have been rather warm and dry to start April.  The snowpack has melted significantly, you can now see a lot of green grass showing and everything is looking pretty good.  I have walked all the greens this week and they all are healthy with only a small amount of snow mold that has popped up since clearing.  There is snow in the forecast for the weekend and it sounds like we could get a fair amount of needed moisture from this storm.  This will help the greens by preventing them from drying out until we are able to get the irrigation system charged up.

ICE

Snow is all off now it time to work on the ice.

The ice has started to melt, time to shovel.

We cleared 15 green on Monday and found a nice ice layer.  It's not really a surprise but almost expected at this point of the season.  It's one of the reasons that we begin clearing greens the first of march.  This ice layer has plenty air in it and has not glossed over yet.  This means that it hasn't been here very long and shouldn't be much of a problem.  With that being said 15 green is notorious for giving us problems year in and year out and ice is not the only factor.  We will monitor it closely and will get out the green covers as soon as the next break in weather allows us to.
We will finish clearing greens this coming week.  Greens 8, 9, 10, 12 and the old 18 green will get cleared over the next few days.  In most years 8, 9 and 10 melt off by themselves.  In fact in the past nine springs this will be the first time I've done anything more than a little shoveling to those greens to finish them off.  We will have to get the blower on them this year because of the reemergence of winter for the second half of March.  We have picked up 30" of snow since the 15th and still have 12" to 20" of snow on the course. 



Finished!