June Rolls On

This past week has been pretty routine for the K Country turf care team. We have been busy keeping on track with our cultural and fertility programs as well as picking away at a few course improvement projects. The HOC on greens was dropped this week to summer playing heights to ensure we meet our goal of having green speeds around 9.5 on the stimpmeter. Along with daily cutting we incorporate a vibratory roll to each course every other day, to ensure we have smooth putting surfaces. The past week we have had some Fusarium pop up on most of our putting surfaces and it got to the point where we needed to put down an application of Heritage to keep it from spreading.


The crew has been busy hiking and white water rafting this past week. Plans have been set for having a BBQ on Canada Day and paintballing the following Friday. We have a very social crew that has definitely taken advantage of the area as well as the local establishment Woody’s. It is pretty impressive to see the staff on time and lively, day in and day out with very little sleep. While I have to be in bed by 10 in order to function the next day. They definitely make me feel old, but keep me young at the same time as many of them have energetic personalities. There are days when I shake my head, but overall they leave me smiling after our end of day meeting.

Safe travels to our turf care team member Lida, who has left us to pursue her career in law back home in England. She was a great team member who will be missed by all, especially her great sense of humour.

Finally I would like to say good luck to the courses all across the prairies that are dealing with flood waters and their affects. I have heard stories of clubhouses having 3 to 4 feet of water in them, golf courses 75 percent underwater and greens having faults in them due to the ground below them starting to slough away. We have been very lucky at Kananaskis as we have had minimal rain and basically only half a day of disruption in mowing. The only issue we have had to deal with is an abundance of bears on the property. We have conservation officers and Karelian bear dogs on the golf course on a daily basis trying to push the bears off. The golf course is home to many elk calves which are a favourite prey for the grizzly bears in the area, which can lead to some interesting situations.




Karelian Bear Dogs



Clayton and Shane getting ready to fertilize the Upper Putter