Removing the Rock

Good Afternoon Blue Hills Country Club, the maintenance crew here at the club have been keeping busy during this cold weather. We had a great season this year and we are continuing this trend with some work next to our cart paths. When we first poured our cart paths a few years ago, the contracted work crew began first by laying the base foundation before the concrete was poured. This foundation was expanded to the size of our old asphalt paths. When we decided that we wanted to have some paths narrower than the old ones, this foundation wasn't shrunken down to size so it was left in the ground. So after it was all poured, our crew came back through and back-filled the voids next to the newly poured path with topsoil, free of rocks and gravel. There have been a few problem areas next to some tees and greens like hole 1 tee and green as well as hole 6 green.

We decided to take the mini excavator and dig down next to these cart paths. We began digging no deeper than 6-8 inches (The depth of the base rock should be), as we dug we found we were digging up the extra base rock. This is problematic because we only originally back-filled 4-8 inches of topsoil in some places. This means the topsoil wasn't deep enough to allow good root growth for the turf to be sodded. So, the extra foundation material would heat up excessively during the summer months and cause stressed turf. This makes it hard for grass to grow and to stay healthy. In order to remedy this problem we are digging down 8 inches and making it free of asphalt and gravel. We then are dumping fresh topsoil back in the holes and leveling them out. We will finish the process by placing sod on top of the back-filled soil.