Silver Maple Samara

The silver maples sure have started to make a mess all over the golf course this past week, making it a challenge to find your golf ball and mow daily! The dense clusters of samara this season and the recent experienced high winds sure creates a huge mess. The silver maples fruit are samaras, each containing a single seed, and winged in shape, often referred to as helicopters. 

 The challenge for the grounds team is cleaning all the greens, tees and fairways each morning before we begin our daily mowing routines. We send out 5-6 guys each morning armed with backpack and pro force tow behind blowers to clean off all short grass ahead of the mowers. Blowing helicopters is quite a challenge as they have a tendency to want to "stick" to the ground and only move short distances.

The flowers on Silver Maples are in dense clusters, produced before the leaves in early spring,with the seeds maturing in early summer. The fruit are the largest of any native maple. Although the wings provide for some transport by air, the fruit are heavy and are also transported by water.

The major seed drop seems to be winding down at this time and things will be back to normal very soon. We are working together as a team to cleanup the mess and we will win this fight. 

Tree Work

Removing Damaged Maple Tree Between 1 Tee & 18 Green

This past winter was one for the records and it sure did leave behind a trail of destruction. Most of the damage occurred back in late December when we had a large ice storm just before the Christmas holiday, knocking out power to much of the area for several days. This huge storm left up to a 1/2 inch of ice coating everything in sight, damaging several trees on the property and uprooting others all together. We had planned on doing our cleanup and tree work during the winter once the ground was frozen, but Mother Nature had other plans for us. Record snowfall this winter covered most all of the debris, preventing us from even accessing the course with equipment and even presented challenges at times to groom the cross country ski trail with a snowmobile. 

Removing Damaged Pine & Trimming Elm Tree

Once the snow melted a month ago, we started the large cleanup process. Our grounds team here at the club has done a wonderful job on the cleanup of the property so far this spring. We had West Michigan Tree Service come out to remove a couple large, severely damaged trees and trim several other trees with a bucket truck that we couldn't reach.

Chipping Brush Pile

The brush pile that had developed from all the storm cleanup was epic! The tree company chipped the whole pile into 10 dump truck loads of material that was hauled to our dump site.

Severely Damaged Maple Tree

The spring cleanup is nearing completion, the club grounds are beginning to look beautiful once again with each day of sunshine that passes and after each load of brush is hauled away. The brutal winter of 2013/2014 has left a noticeable mark on the landscape and has scarred some trees for life.