One of the more mundane but extremely important jobs we do in the winter is cleaning the ditches throughout the course. The many ditches throughout the course are the first segment of what is a very extensive drainage system.
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| Removing the river rock from a ditch. |
Every hole on the course has at least one ditch and most have several. Over time, debris builds up slowly filling the ditches. If we did not clean them they would fill up and excess water would travel across the greens, tees, and fairways, thus making the course unplayable.
Each year we manually remove all the river rock from the ditches and then excavate all the debris that has built up. The material is mostly decayed plant material, so we can and do use it as a type of compost.
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| Rock ditch after being cleaned out. |
While extremely important as part of our drainage infrastructure, there is no doubt that the ditches look so much better once they are cleaned.
