Happy New Year to everyone, may it bring all of us good golfing and great weather! The golf course has experienced 2 heavy snows, and 2 subsequent melts in the last month. December's temperatures ranged from a low of -14 to a high of 58. Turf is hanging in there nicely thanks to timely melting of any ice formation and nice insulation from snow cover during those very cold nights. So far, so good!
The staff and I were busy beginning our annual tree work in December. We are about halfway through as I write this article. Most tree work this winter is a continued effort of executing Elcona's Tree Management Plan, reviewed each year by the Golf and Greens Committee. Some of the tree work this winter is suggested from the Master Improvement Plan submitted to Elcona from Hills/Forrest. I have included a few pictures below of some of the work so far:
3 Blue Spruce were removed on 9 tee to better reveal the nice Sugar Maple on the left, as well as better scatter cart traffic at the end of the asphalt path.
2 Locust were removed on the right side of 15 for their knack of producing much litter in the fairway. The locust closest to the fairway was rotting in the trunk, and the picture above shows a sassafras sapling growing inside the crotch of the tree.
The locust to the right of the blue tee on #4 was removed. This, along with several other locusts on property, were impacted by the Imprellis herbicide. Unknowing to any of us, this tree was severely rotten inside, and posed a danger to anyone on that tee if the winds were correct.
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| Another picture of the locust removed on 4. |
Finally, I included this picture of Bowser and I on 3 green, not only to show everyone that we still had a bit of snow on the ground, but to show off Gus (the large burr oak to the right of 5 green). Thanks to consulting with 2 of Northern Indiana's more knowledgeable tree experts, we have a plan in place to maintain Gus's presence at Elcona for many years to come. I will have a blog article on that in the coming weeks.
If you have any questions about the golf course, please feel free to email me at ryan@elconacc.com. Again, Happy New Year to everyone and I look forward to what 2017 brings!
Ryan
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