If there’s
one thing I’ve learned during my time employed at golf courses – it’s that
there’s always something hindering
perfection. If everything was
perfect all the time – there’d hardly be a reason to hire a maintenance
staff.
A challenge facing the club and its maintenance crew this spring is the amount of skunk/racoon damage there is on the golf course – particularly on the Lake Course. The animals dig up the landscape in search of white grubs – in this case – European Chafer grubs. These grubs go through a life cycle which sees them turn into beetles, mate, lay eggs in the soil, and so on. The areas that are dug up range from small confined spaces, to massive spaces as seen on #6 lake in this photo. The other picture is that same area after it’s been repaired.
Any large
areas will be drag raked, topped with top soil and re-seeded. Any smaller areas, the turf will be flipped
back over and rolled. Please avoid
walking through or driving through any areas that have been torn up by the
skunks/racoons. Whether they’ve been
repaired or not, the less traffic those areas receive the better chance they
will have at recovering. When the timing
is right, the appropriate steps will be taken this summer to eliminate the
amount of grubs we have in our soils at Pike Lake.
