Sprig Week at Irving Park

Sprigs
The week to install sprigs on the Irving Park course has finally arrived. As of today, Monday, June 15, the course is officially closed.  Monday and Tuesday will be used to try and prepare all the damaged areas for sprig planting through cultivation and proper irrigation.  The first step was to fertilize all the damaged areas with a good starter fertilizer, which has a high phosphorus analysis that will help with initial root growth. The next step will be to aggressively aerify each of the damaged areas. Depending on soil conditions some of the areas will be aerified as much as 4 or 5 times.  Once the areas are loosened with the aerifiers they are watered to prevent them from drying out too much. The last step, just prior to sprigging will be to apply the proper rate of weed control to keep these highly cultivated areas from being over taken with summer weeds such as Crabgrass and Goosegrass. This application will take place Tuesday afternoon and will be the last item to go onto these areas before sprigs are placed on the ground.

The actual sprigs are scheduled to go out Wednesday and Thursday.  We plan to sprig approximately 1,000 bushels/acre.  All our sprigs will be placed by hand.  In addition to our Irving Park staff we will be using numerous outside golf shop staff as well as staff provided by an outside contractor.  All in all, we plan to have 35 people available on Wednesday and Thursday to spread and plant the sprigs.

Once the sprigs are spread we will go behind and cut them in with a set of disks and a roller.  Sprigs above ground can survive if kept saturated but the sprigs that do best are definitely the ones that get pinched into the soil.  The final step is to turn on the water and keep it turned on for several weeks. We will plan to back the water off these areas once the sprigs begin to show new leaf growth and set new roots.  We expect the saturated phase of the sprigging process to last a minimum of three weeks.

Damaged Area Pre-Prep

Beginning Aerification

Multiple Aerifications

Keeping Aerified Areas Moist

Hand Spreading Sprigs

Sodding
Just because we are sprigging doesn't mean we have stopped making repairs via sod installation.  We have another truckload of sod scheduled for delivery Tuesday morning to make additional repairs to the #5 and #7 green complexes at Irving Park.  We also have a truckload scheduled for delivery on Wednesday morning to the Farm course for repairs to holes 11-15.

Sod Prep #7 Irving Park

Sod Prep #5 Irving park

The Work Doesn't Stop There
While the course is closed for repairs we will remove a large Oak tree to the left of #1 white tee at Irving Park.  We have struggled for numerous years with turf quality in this area and this year the shade damage was very significant.  As we will be required to repair this area with a significant amount of sod we felt it is was prudent to remove the tree prior to making these repairs.

Dead Turf and Tree Removal Left #1 Tee Irving Park

And Lastly, how about this weather?  I guess all the Superintendents around here said a few prayers for warmer weather and it has definitely been answered.  The hot spell is definitely a welcome trend but as both our courses have Bentgrass greens 95-100 degree weather for an extended period of time in Mid-June is quite the conundrum.  But no one likes to hear people whine so we will just suck it up, keep working and do the best we can.  Such is the life of a Golf Course Employee or so it seems as of late!