We are excited to announce that we started the process of renovating the North greens back in May. We sprayed the old North greens three times with an herbicide to kill the existing grass in preparation for the new greens. In May, the contractor arrived to initiate the removal of the dead grass, as well as the old greens grass; he also removed the top 4" of old soil and tilled another 6" down. The contractor then added back another 4" of new greens mix soil over the tilled soil. The greens were fumigated after this process and left alone for two weeks to ensure a successful fumigation process; this is a crucial step as the fumigation takes care of any contaminants in the soils. Once the tarps were removed from the greens due to the fumigation, the contractor completed final grading and shaping to get ready for the new sprigs, we then added our pre-plant fertilizers to the soil at this time.
On June 2nd, the greens were all sprigged with TifEagle Bermuda, the collars were also recently sodded with 4.5’ wide Bimini Bermuda grass. From the beginning we made sure to have a persistent agronomic approach to ensure prosperous growth. During the sprigging process…We. Got. Rain. And lots of it! We took about 2.9" of rain during the process and another 1.8" the day after, thanks Mother Nature! After the greens were sprigged, we watered all day, every day for the first week to ensure the sprigs never dried out. One week after sprigging the greens they are now ready to start receiving fertilizer on a weekly basis. The second week (14 days after sprigging), we rolled the greens with a 1.5-ton double drum roller and mowed them for the first time at .190". We are now on our third week and will be topdressing the greens and mowing them every other day for two weeks.
You will notice as you play the East and South courses that we possess heavy weed pressure throughout the courses, especially near the green’s collars. The last couple years since re-grassing the greens and collars, there have been issues with turf loss and high weed pressure, turf loss comes during the conversion time in the Spring.
Currently, we’re transitioning the Winter Rye out to allow the Bermuda to grow throughout the Summer months. Over the last two seasons, the Winter Rye was very competitive with the Bermuda and unfortunately caused poor, bare, and weedy conditions.
The action plan is to eradicate most, if not all the weeds around the greens and not overseed this upcoming Winter in the collars and approaches. Since there won't be any Winter overseed in the collars, the Bermuda should have an enhanced chance to establish and heal rapidly from seasonal play. We feel that we can keep a strong Bermuda base near the greens during the winter without the Rye grass. A great example of what the Rye grass can do to newly planted Bermuda is the tee tops; we have new tees and they did not lose any Bermuda from Rye grass because they were not over-seeded. We recently started an extremely aggressive agronomic approach to eliminating the weeds, it slowly began with multiple factors coming into play.
Early Spring brought harsh drought conditions in addition to more rounds of golf being played at the same time, we then found ourselves almost out of water to irrigate. With a limited water supply it was difficult to implement an effective weed program, but thankfully the rain started.
Once the sky opened with rain, we were finally able to grow our Bermuda at a satisfactory rate again. Until the last week, almost every herbicide application we completed was affected by daily showers making it exceptionally difficult to gain control of the applied herbicide. As of late, we can better identify the effects of what timely applications and dry weather will do for a good application.
Controlling the weeds and continuing to get better each day is what we strive to do here at Spanish Wells, our team is working hard to provide a great course for you to enjoy for years to come!