A couple of seasons have now passed
since green sand has been used to fill in divots on tee boxes and fairways. The
green sand not only does a good job of camouflaging the many divots, especially
on par three tee boxes and driving range tees, but also speeds up the rate at
which new seedlings germinate. In the spring and fall, the daily temperatures
are much cooler, slowing down seed development. With the help of green sand, the small
increase in temperature that is resulted in the darker sand is enough to
increase seed development.
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| Ian and Kyle making the sand and loading it into bin |
There are two types of sand that
are used on the golf course throughout the season. One type of sand is very
fine that comes from sand dunes north of Saratoga. This particular sand is used
primarily for topdressing the tees and fairways. The other type of sand is hauled in from Colorado and consists of larger aggregates and allows for better drainage and plant growth and is
used strictly on the greens at the Old Baldy Club. Both types of sand are kept
separate to avoid contamination of the putting greens sand.
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| Final product of the dyed sand |
As each season arrives and all of
those divots are made, large amounts of green sand are used. The green sand can
be purchased for a pricy amount and our location drives the price up even more,
forcing us to dye it ourselves. Normally the sand is made during the season,
but is used faster than it can be made. The equipment manager, Paul Perue, is off
for a couple of days allowing us to sneak in and make a mess while he is gone.
Each scoop of sand is put into an
electric concrete mixer where at this point it is mixed with water and green
dye. After it is properly mixed, it will be put into a bin (made of recycled
pallets) and then moved into one of our storage areas. Seed is added later on
right before the sand is applied to the turf. The plan is to get as many bins
made as possible before the start of the season. The only setback so far is
dealing with frozen sand and snow contamination, besides that the entire
process is going good.
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| A quick update from the last post. Here is a look at the greens samples taken two weeks ago, great progress. |
