MĀKENA GOLF COURSE SUSTAINABILITY
Our Golf Course Maintenance and Landscape teams care deeply about applying sustainability practices in their care of place.
WATER MANAGEMENT
• With our state-of-the-art Toro Lynx irrigation system, we are able to irrigate using evapotranspiration rates related to the weather, allowing us to only put back the water that was lost throughout the day through transpiration eliminating over-watering any areas and wasting water.
• We use volumetric water content (VMC) moisture meters to check our greens moisture daily and we do a lot of hand watering practices to minimize the amount of water we use on the golf course, while also keeping the greens and fairways firm and fast for our membership.
• We burn organic sulfur into a vapor and inject these vapors into our irrigation lakes to help lower our pH and help control algae blooms without having to use harmful algicides/herbicides.
INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT
• We completed several Tee Composting trails in 2022-2023 to help minimize fertilizer, pesticide and irrigation inputs.
• We have planted a variety of native plants across the golf course and the entire property that thrive in their natural environment and require little to no fertilizer/pesticide inputs.
FERTILIZATION
SOIL AMENDMENT
• On the golf course we use “spoon feeding” practices for our fertilization program, only applying very small amounts of nutrients to replace what the plant has used up avoiding any excess fertilizers leaching into the soil or running off.
• We incorporate Bio Char into our landscape planting areas along with using other organic products to help with soil remediation.
• We also use several organic humic products and processed fish fertilizer to maintain the integrity of naturally occurring amino acids, vitamins, hormones and proteins.
ADDITIONAL PRACTICES
• We use a ESD microbial wash pad at our main shop that biologically breaks down nitrates along with any oil, grease, and other contaminants so the grey water is safe to reuse.
• We are currently planting vetiver grasses across the property to prevent erosion damage and runoff during heavy rain events.
• We manage and take care of several natural honey bee hives across the property.
• The majority of our mowing equipment are hybrid mowers which help minimize harmful emissions being released into the environment.
• We are currently in the process of building safe nesting areas for our native birds (Ae’o) to protect them from mongoose and other threats during their nesting/hatching periods.