Overseed 2017

A beautiful morning with the seed down and water running.

Overseed is in full swing here at Pinnacle Peak, with the Agronomy staff going all out last week to make it happen.  Over the course of 5 days beginning last Monday, our department fully scalped and prepped the golf course, completed a course-wide greens aerification in one day and wrapped things up on Friday by successfully seeding the entire property in one day.  Hat's off to the maintenance staff for a hard and successful week.

Beginning the first Monday of closure, we began to scalp and prep the golf course.  Thanks to the cultural practices we were able to do during the greens renovation and continued to build on earlier in the Summer, the fairways and tees prepped far easier than in years past, which helped enable us to wrap up this portion of overseed in three days.  Having this completed allowed us to focus on our greens surfaces Thursday, including prepping the collars for seed, verti-cutting the greens two directions, punching holes with a 1/4" hollow tine, topdressing, applying fall amendments and flushing the sand profile.  Being able to aerify and let our greens breath and recover this fall should allow for excellent playing conditions as soon as we open.  

Having both the overseed prep and greens aerification behind us, we tackled the last major chore of the week: seeding.  After a lot of miles walked and seed bags opened, we completed the course by Friday afternoon.  The majority of the crew enjoyed a much deserved break over the weekend, as the irrigation crew worked through last weekend to make sure the irrigation system was working as it should.

About a week prior to our closure, we applied a chemical to the collars which targeted and attacked the bermudagrass that had encroached over the course of the Summer.  As a follow-up, a second application was done prior to prepping them to ensure a complete kill.  Before the greens aerification, we vertically mowed the collars to help open things up and scalped them down.  Following that, we applied a layer of sand by hand to ensure smoothness and a good bed for seeding.  Bentgrass seed was then applied and gently raked into the top layer of sand, quite similar to our process last Summer while growing in the greens surface.  

Having given the bentgrass a five day head start, we applied ryegrass seed to the collars.  Because of bentgrass seedlings tendency for thin leaves and a slow tillering process, it was determined the ryegrass was needed to ensure an acceptable playing surface for opening day.  The plan moving forward remains the same, with consistent inter-seeding of bentgrass through the Spring to ensure a healthy and thick stand on collars going into the tough Summer months.  

We've been seeing germination on the course on day 4 with the course really popping Thursday.  We should see a pretty steady stand of ryegrass by the weekend, and anticipate potential first mows middle to end of next week.  During this time period, the staff has been productive cleaning and trimming all desert areas on property, and should have the course dialed in and ready for opening day.

Jose Elias on the dust-mobile prepping fairways for seed.

Cody Horstman getting in on the fun during greens aerification.  What focus and determination.

Desiderio Gomez seeding the apron.  A lot of miles put in this day.

Hats off to these tired guys.  Here we are wrapping up seeding on the last green of the day.

What a difference a day makes.  On the left is the North tee on Tuesday afternoon.  On the right is Thursday morning.