Spring is starting to show up throughout the golf course. The cool season grasses are doing their part in celebrating St Patrick's day by turning from the brown color of dormancy to bright and dark shades of green. Some of the first flowering trees and shrubs are starting to come into bloom and the spring flowering bulbs are getting ready to put on a show. Growing degree days is how we measure bloom times for plants and we (in western hills) are currently at 65 GDDs. Right now is the time for red maples, forsythia, cornelian cherry dogwoods, and magnolias to start blooming. We are behind the bloom times from the last two years but that is because we had a cooler February and early March then the previous years.The Ohio State University puts out a very informative website to track GDDs for our area and can be accessed by
clicking here.
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| Our neighbors' cornelian cherry dogwoods in bloom |
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| Red Maple coming into bloom |
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| Tulips appearing in landscape bed |
Spring is a transition time for the grounds department. We finished up the winter tree work which included taking down 12 dying/diseased trees in house and 6 hazardous trees that were taken down by Gregory Forrest Lester. However, the removal of these trees is just the beginning of the process. The leftover stumps have to be ground up, the grindings removed, dirt added, and finally seed and straw put down. We are at the final stages of this process and we should be finished in the coming week. Also, in early March, we were able to get all the bunkers and landscape beds edged with a walk behind edger. This will give the bunkers a nice crisp edge to start off the golf season and will be maintained by trimming on an every other week basis. On the horticulture side, we are beginning to clean out beds, cut down perennials, and mulch all of the clubhouse and golf course landscaping.
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| First cut in felling red maple on #7 |
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| Filling in stump holes with dirt |
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| Edging on a landscape bed |
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| Bunker before edging |
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| Bunker after edging |
The driving range will be getting some additional mats added and we just finished up the excavation of those areas. The next steps will be to pour the concrete and add the new mats. This should be accomplished by mid April.
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| Excavating area for mats on the back practice tee |
The mowing operation has begun and will be picking up steam in the next couple of weeks. The greens have been rolled and mowed three times and the first mowing of the fairways has been concluded. Next up will be tees, approaches, and finally rough. The green's height of cut will be slowly lowered as the ground temperature begins to warm up to optimal growing conditions. This along with increased mowing, rolling, and topdressing should allow us to pick up the green speeds to our desired stimpmeter readings by May.
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| First cut on #3 green |
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| First cut on #6 fairway |
Finally, as many of you already know, Delhi Hills golf course has seen its last days. We have taken advantage of the course's final hours and have been able to cut out bentgrass sod from the 9th green. Bentgrass sod is difficult to obtain in our area with the closest distributor residing in Pittsburgh. The sod will be used for touching up bad areas on our practice tees and replenishing the bentgrass nursery on the driving range. So in a small way the Delhi course will live on at WHCC for years to come!
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| Delhi Hills Golf Course #9 green |
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| The beginnings of our tee/fairway bentgrass nursery |
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| New bentgrass sod added to far practice tee |
Brad Piecuch
Assistant Superintendent/Horticulturist
