Winter Agenda



This was the result of an unintended irrigation cycle running on a cold night.

"So what do you do when there's snow on the ground?"

When I tell people what I do for a living, this is one of the questions that comes up, especially this time of year.  Though the winter season is our "down time" we still manage to find plenty of things to keep us busy.  For the coming months we've compiled a large to-do list to ensure War Admiral and Man O War are prepared for the winter, and will be ready to roll come spring.

Here are some of the things we've completed so far:

• Topdressing greens.  We used a little more sand than we normally would to give the turf a protective cover for the colder temps that we see in January.  This is a common practice in colder areas, Colorado for example.  HERE is a blog post from Sean McCue @ CC at Castle Pines explaining this process in a little more depth. 
• Bringing in all of the furniture and course accessories from both courses: Benches, cooler stands, ball washers, trashcans, etc...Later they will be cleaned up and repainted/refinished to go out looking new next spring
• Irrigation audit and system shutdown.  Before winterizing our irrigation system and pump station we wanted to spend time going through our entire system head by head and fixing any issues we encountered.  It's much better to get this done now, so that next year we have a fresh start and aren't fighting with our system when we start to irrigate again.
• Identifying in house projects we can accomplish with less play on the course including: drainage, tree work, stump grinding, and chipper work. 
• Budgeting, which is what I'm taking a break from now.



Just a few of the items we bring in from the cold.

Winter time is a nice break from the action, but it's also key to our preparation for the summer ahead.