It's a busy Monday out here on the course and the greens are really getting a workout.  Today the greens were aerified with needle tines and then topdressed with sand.  On top of the sand topdressing, we also applied a potassium fertilizer to help with fall rooting and gypsum to maintain soil structure and to help remove harmful salts from our irrigation water that build up in our soil.  The sand, fertilizer, and gypsum were then dragged into the turf canopy and hopefully, some will work its way into the small aerfication holes.  Next the greens were rolled to smooth out the small bumps from the aerifying and now we are spraying the greens with a surfactant which reduces localized dry spots and helps water move deeper into the ground.  After all this work, the greens will get a deep watering this afternoon, so they may be a little on the soft side tomorrow.

In a previous post I mentioned that the 7th hole has very sandy soil, which isn't all that common for the Chicago area, and I think that the history behind that sandy soil is a unique feature of Calumet Country Club.  Our course sits on the edge, or the beach, of Lake Chicago which was a larger version of Lake Michigan that was created as the glaciers retreated at the end of the last ice age.  There are also some other pockets of sand on the course, but that is the most concentrated area. 

In these soil samples from the 7th hole rough, you can see that once you get about six inches down into the ground, the soil is pure sand.  The top is also very sandy, but has some organic matter mixed in which gives it a darker color. 

The sandy soil is also home to another unique feature of Calumet, black oak trees.  Most of the trees between the 4th and 7th holes are black oak trees, which grow best in sandy soil.  This line of black oak trees is a natural feature and continues into the neighborhood on the other side of Dixie Highway along with the "beach" sand.  When the course was built, these were pretty much the only trees on the course.  In fact, there is a picture in the men's grill taken in that direction from the clubhouse, and those oak trees are the only trees in the picture.   

A sprinkler got stuck on last night on the front of theseventh green.  This is what it looks like when a sprinker runs for six hours straight.  We will try to squee-gee as much water off the green and approach as possible, but it will still be very soft so please repair your ballmarks and be careful when you are walking on it.  Also, we will probably have to skip cutting this green for today, so it may be slower than the rest.  Hopefully the breeze this morning will dry it out quickly. 

If you have been near the 7th hole in the last few weeks, I'm sure that you have seen a few of these nasty looking bugs hovering around the ground.  Don't let them scare you though, they are not wasps or hornets, they are called cicada killers.  They are not aggressive, and will only sting if you stepped on one or grabbed it out of the air, unless you are a cicada.  As the name suggests, they kill cicadas by stinging them and then dragging them back in to the burrows that they dig in the ground.  They tend to concentrate in that area of the course because they like to dig in sandy soil, and that area of the course is very sandy.  On other courses that do not have sandy soil areas, you will often see them digging in bunkers.

Pile of sand created by burrowing cicada killers

Cicada Killer Mounds on 7 fairway