Roundup Application

Some of you may have noticed the blue/green dye around the greens and in the club grounds.  This is a dye indicator that shows where our chemical application was made with the spray hawk bordering the greens.  We used the dye this year to try to make us more efficient this winter.  When we spray with the standard spray rigs we use foam marker to show where we have gone.  20 min later the foam is gone and no one knows that we were ever there.  The Spray Hawk device does not have a foam marker there fore we cannot see where we sprayed chemical very well.  We added the dye this year to reduce overlapping of chemical and missed areas in between passes.  I think that it really made the operation much more smooth.  The operators doing the spraying loved it.  I am still not loving the color left behind but I am a fan of the process being more efficient.

Coincidentally,  If you do have a yard that is Bermudagrass or are looking to start the process of cleaning up the weeds in your yard now is the time to make that roundup application.  You have through February to finish this task. 

Twitter

Just an update for those of you who are interested in Indian Hills information or golf course agronomy information.  I have recently discovered the world of Twitter.  I love getting my news feeds there;  I also get a lot of different industry news there.  I am trying to put out additional information concerning golf course agronomy or Indian Hills information.  So, if you are interested in that kind of thing you can follow me @BradMarcy on Twitter.

Number 7 Water Feature is Back!!!!

As all of you golfers and homeowners that live on or near hole #7 know the water feature on this hole was drained.  The cause was a fissure in the limestone that opened up to an underground stream.  I am sorry that it took so long to get the water feature back, but it was a precarious process,  We had to wait until the area quit leaking water to determine what the problem was.

The Problem Hole is 2 feet wide

After we found the problem we called in some experts on the subject for advice on fixing the problem. ( I personally have never dealt with a problem such as this before.)  So we spoke with the geology experts who were very helpful and very enthusiastic about their profession.  Their recommendation was to expose the hole and fill with a material called Bentonite.  Bentonite is a clay byproduct of mining and it is devoid of water.  When it comes in contact with water it swells to about 3-5 times its size and creates a clay barrier layer or expands to clog holes whichever is needed.
The pond was as low as it was going to get and we were in the middle of the dry season (late October).  We Brought in an Excavator to search to find the problem.  The more we dug the wetter the hole got.  We were running two 2 inch trash pumps to keep the water out and we could barely keep up with the water coming out of the fissure I took 3 attempts with the excavator to clean up the hole.  At this point we were getting out of the dry season and having to schedule around weather events, but we finally got close enough to the fissure to attempt to plug it with the Bentonite.
link to a video of the underground stream in action