Tree prunning

One nice thing about having an assistant that spent 7 years working for a tree care company is that he loves to prune trees.  Eric spent his winter going hole by hole pruning every tree on the golf course.  The most noticeable improvement is on 11 tee box, where Eric removed all of the Russian Olive trees and thinned the Cottonwoods on the south side of the tee.  This widened the tee corridor on 11 significantly, making the tee shot much less intimidating.

The best thing about how Eric has pruned the trees is that most people will notice that something looks different, but you can't put your finger on it.  Thanks Eric for all of your hard work this winter!

Vole Damage

Typical vole damage in rough (B. Guddat of NV from volecontrol.com)

Recently I was reading Golf Course Management magazine (GCM) and came across an interesting article titled Voles, voles and more voles!.  We have a serious problem on our golf course with voles due to the amount of undisturbed native areas around the golf course.  Every year since I have been at the golf course we have had some vole damage, ranging from dead trees to ruts across the rough and fairways.  With over 300 new trees planted on the golf course we have taken extra steps to try and prevent voles from eating the bark and roots of the trees.  In the fall we mow a 8 foot wide zone around every tree in the native down to a height of 2", then we spray an area 3' wide around each tree with roundup to kill all vegetation that is close to the tree trunk.  After reading the article in GCM I have come to realize that we will probably always have a vole problem, we just need to make sure we are doing everything we can to limit the damage.