Mass plantings in a arid environment can pose a few problems. In the past, we've had some trouble maintaining newly planted trees when the heat of summer arrives. Since we try to get the turf as dry as possible, our irrigation in the rough or fairways do not provide enough water to wet the root zone of trees. The established trees have no problem tapping into our shallow ground water, but these new ones will struggle without a little help.

Running around with a hose is labor intensive and much of the water will runoff if you're in a hurry. There are some well designed drip containers that can be found at forestry supply companies or your local hardware store, but the price kept me away. I am pretty cheap. So, to save a little green in the wallet and on the trees, we gathered up a bunch of five gallon buckets.

Jan, our Equipment Manager, dressed them up with a little spray paint and drilled one or two 1/16 inch holes in the bottom.  The slow drip of water takes about 2 hours to empty the bucket straight to the soil.  It only takes a few minutes to move the buckets to the next batch of trees which we've been doing daily.  Right now we have 10 buckets and 50 trees so they all get a shot of water in a week's time.


We will continue this practice through the bulk of summer until the trees are firmly rooted and can find water on their own.  We may be able to skip a few, here and there, when we start to water the turf on a regular basis.  At this time, we are irrigating very irregularly to keep the course dry and to transition out some of the poa that grew in the fairways over the winter.