11/28/2012 7:11 PM
This will be our first year of dormant bermuda greens. We hammer into our crew the importance of fixing ballmarks and the importance of doing it properly so we don't have to look at a bunch of scars all winter. In the past we have mixed the sand in a cement mixer with some paint combinations and kept it in a half barrel in the shop. The guys would fill the bottles and out on the course, build "sand castles" using too much sand in each ballmark. Also, there would be little paint nuggets that didn't get mixed in and if they dragged a foot over after filling a mark would leave a green stripe on the green. Those days are behind us! This might seem labor intensive but really isn't. We still mix the sand as usual, but utilized some old valve boxes, half barrels and window screen to get a pretty sweet final product. When one of the crew members has a spare moment, instead of standing around they run some sand through the sifter. Works for us. US PTND pending...