Aeration

 Aerating 9 Fairway

On Monday and Tuesday we were able to aerate all our fairways. Throughout the remainder of the week, we have been doing extra clean-up around the edges, giving the fairways a cut, filling areas with divot mix and adding extra water to help in recovery. This is a process that we like to do when the grass is actively growing so recovery time is minimal. As well, the warm and dry weather helps with our clean up and in the summer we have our highest number of staff to assist with the process. We attempt to get them done over a few days so that disruption to golf doesn’t drag on.

Clean up of Aeration

Our next small tine greens aeration will be on August 24th. This will set up the greens for a busy September with hopefully some great weather. We have decided on a 5-7 week rotation of greens aeration because of the results we have seen in the past. The many benefits include a healthy stand of turf on our greens, effective fertilizer and chemical applications, controlled thatch levels and effective infiltration rates of water during irrigation and rain events. The smaller tines are less disruptive so healing time is minimal. If we leave the greens to long without the aeration they are less responsive and become sealed on top. Gases buildup under the surface that need to be vented on a regular basis.

Due to the age of our greens we remove the cores and back fill with sand. This will modify the top of the soil profile helping with infiltration of water and firming up the surface.

Take a moment and click on the links below that discuss aeration.
 http://tinyurl.com/o78fftc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=863Ix8czcoY

Also look at Core Aeration by the Numbers. This will help explain what our goal is and how we came about putting our program together. We are using ¼” tines at 1.5” x 1.5” spacing (similar to 1” x 2” on articles chart). We are getting close to the 20% that they discuss. If we where to limit the amount of times we aerate we would need to increase the size of our tines and would therefore increase recovery time.

Our tentative schedule for the remainder of the season is as follows,

• August 24^th, Small Tine Greens Aeration
• Early October, Small Tine Greens Aeration
• October, Tee Aeration
• End of season, Deep Tine Aeration
• End of season, Mid Size Tine Aeration (If needed)

Surviving July and Easing into August

The end of July was hot and humid sending the golf course into survival mode as indicated by some off color grass and thinned out areas. The lack of rain during this time has really dried out the turf, but with irrigation and selective hand watering, we were able to keep the necessary areas alive. We have been taking it easy on our greens as much as possible to alleviate unnecessary stress on them. Our cultural practices have been kept at a minimum for this reason.

Irrigation on #8 Fairway

Hand Watering on #18 Green

The beginning of August has been a breath of fresh air. Cooler temperatures both day and night, lower humidity, plenty of sunshine and a couple of rain episodes. This has allowed the turf to come out of survival mode to begin recovery. We have been able to push the greens more and resume our cultural practices such as verticutting with a heavier topdressing. With fairway aeration approaching, the fairways should be healthy going into it and make for a quick recovery if the weather cooperates next week.

#4 Green Site

July Update

The next two weeks look like the longest warm/dry weather we may have this season. Over this time period we will be taking it easy on the turf, trying not to add too much extra stress. We will cut or roll the greens on a daily basis but not both. Also we will back off on our cultural programs of topdressing and verticutting until these extra heat stresses cool down. We will be hand watering greens as much as they need it so that we are only watering what is needed.

Morning sun at this time of year is very important for turf recovery. It is usually cool enough that photosynthesis is occurring compared to the heat of the day when the plant will shut down for survival. There are select areas on our greens that have little or restricted light in the morning and are therefore more stressed. We will be making sure these areas have the appropriate amounts of water, fertilizer and chemical to help fight off diseases. As the season progresses they will become stronger again and will be prepared for some good fall golf. 

#2 Green Early Morning

#10 Green Early Morning

In inspecting our green sites, our plan moving forward is to selectively prune and remove specific trees continuing this fall to help improve sunlight and air flow.

Dollar Spot

With the excess moisture and humidity over the last few weeks, we have seen some Dollar Spot on some tees and the fairways. A week ago we sprayed a control product on all the greens, two tee decks and 6 fairways. We have been monitoring the rest and are ready to spray the remainder if needed. Culturally we have aerated select tees that we feel are most susceptible and applied a low rate of fertilizer to help the turfgrass naturally fight off the disease. Luckily for us, the rain events have slowed down and we have had some cooler temperatures so the disease has not progressed. Usually by this time in the season we have sprayed all the greens, tees and fairways for Dollar Spot which is the most common disease of cool season turfgrass.

 Dollar Spot on #15 Fairway

As part of our tee renovation projects we have been converting our tees to Dwarf Bluegrass. This grass is less susceptible to Dollar Spot and we have not been able to find any disease on these tees at this time. We now have 25% of our tees converted and plan to do more in the future.

Dwarf Bluegrass 

Dwarf Bluegrass on #9 tee

Wet Week

The weather has took a wet turn this week receiving around 2 inches of rain total.

Standing water on 17 Green

 The positive from this is the golf course has greened up and we have been able to turn off the irrigation system for a few days. The unfortunate result is less golfer traffic and the excess moisture bringing on turf diseases. Today we have seen our first Dollar Spot of the season. A few tees and fairways are showing the disease so we will monitor this closely over the next few days and make a decision on how we are going to handle it.

Dollar Spot on the 11th tee

May Recap

We have had some great weather at the beginning of the season. The greens have filled in well and are looking healthy with a good root system heading into the summer. We have had below average rainfall throughout May, therefore we have been regularly watering greens more so than usual. Our tee renovation and nursery construction are complete and with some good weather in June the tees will be playable in early July. Moving forward into June we will be tidying up lots of small jobs and working on providing quality playing surfaces.

#17 Green

Path Work

Part of our capital improvements this year is resurfacing some of our existing cart paths. We have begun preparation on many of the damaged paths and will be paving these areas soon. Our roadway to the maintenance shop that is used to travel from 4 to 5, 10 to 11 and 17 to 18 was the main area that we began with. 

Resurfacing roadway

Root Pruning
Tree roots compete for moisture and nutrients with our playing surfaces. We have recently been around the property root pruning where we believe the trees are adding stress to the playing surfaces. We stay far enough away to not damage the trees but still help out our playing surfaces. We look forward to seeing the results of this later on in the season.

Root Pruning on the back of 13 tee

Greens Nursery

Our new greens nursery has been completed and ready to begin establishment. Seed and cores from the greens have been applied along with some fertilizer. Our goal will be to have it strong and healthy for the winter in preparation for next spring if needed.

New greens nursery

Greens Aeration

The greens on the course where becoming very firm and infiltration rates where decreasing. When this happens our water, fertilizer and chemical applications become less effective and therefore unneeded stress is added to our greens. Our small tine aeration helps vent the build up of unwanted gasses in the soil profile and a heavy topdressing to fill in the holes provides a good place for further gas exchange. Since we have done the aeration the greens have filled in better and are ready for the pressures to come.

Core harvesting after aeration

Heavy Topdressing

Brushing sand into aeration holes

Smoothing out the playing surface

May Accomplishments

• Finished most repairs on greens
• Mowed and rolled on a regular basis
• Prepared for asphalt
• Asphalted roadway
• Nursery constructed
• 2 tees on 4 and a tee on 9 renovated
• Reshaped edge of 3 pond
• Checked sand depths in bunkers
• Topdressed on Tuesdays
• Aerated greens

Tee Renovation

This seasons tee renovations include the Blue/White tee on #4 and the White tee on #9.

We have been using the following criteria during our tee renovations:

• Level the playing surface
• Provide adequate surface drainage on (1% slope from front to back) and around the tee  
• Increase size when needed
• Aim the tee at the landing area
• Resurface with dwarf bluegrass

 Beginning of the grading process

 Newly sodded #9 White with Dwarf Bluegrass

The benefits of Dwarf Bluegrass

• Can be cut at tee height
• Handles winter stress better
• Divot recovery is quicker
• Is not as susceptible to diseases

 Rough grading of surrounds to drain water away from the teeing surface

 Final Preparations

 Newly sodded #4 Blue tee

Newly sodded #4 White tee

Greens Nursery

We have begun the construction of a second greens nursery beside the 7th tee. This is to use in combination with our existing nursery for any repairs that maybe needed. Having extra area will let us have more mature turf available in times of need.

Removal of old cart path and tree stumps

Working existing soil to prepare for surface drainage

Drain lines back filled with pea stone and beginning of greens mix installation

Finishing grade - just a little more sand cap to install

The two main things needed to finish this project is the installation of irrigation and the final prep of the seed bed. We will be spreading our aeration cores and overseeding soon to give the area lots of time to establish before next season.

May Update

May has begun with some great weather. The greens are filling in and looking healthy and the root system is looking strong preparing for the summer. We are on a regular schedule of cutting and rolling the greens now so over the next few weeks ball roll and playability should increase. We have introduced a new process of brushing the greens a few times per week to stand the grass up to get a good cut. Hopefully this will provide a more uniform playing surface moving forward.

 #5 Green

We have begun our growth regulator applications which restricts shoot growth and promotes lateral growth to fill in our remaining scars from the off season. Also we have applied our wetting agent that helps the soil hold moisture for the plant to take up.

 Spraying Greens (Wetting Agent)

We have been troubleshooting a few irrigation problems so we apologize to anyone who we may have watered over the last week. With a little more fine tuning we will be already for any dry times to come.

Watering #4

April Recap

Things greening up (#9)

We have been playing the waiting game most of April. We are finally getting some more consistent weather and the course is drying up. We have been around most of the course cleaning up any debris from the winter and any tree work we had done. First cuts on all areas have been done and we are looking forward to the grass really starting to grow soon. This will promote recovery and increase the quality of the playing surfaces. We will begin cutting and rolling the greens on a consistent basis and lowering mowing heights.

We have made the larger sod repairs on all of the greens and now its time to start working on a few smaller areas. The putting green will take a few more weeks to recover with some good weather.

 Greens Repair on#7

Our irrigation system is charged up and ready for the season with only a few miner problems that we have corrected. The system draws its water out of the Black River which we have a permit for that will be renewed at the end of this season. We have begun the renewal process and we don't foresee any major issues moving forward.

 Intake repair in the river (foot valve)

The 17 green had a rough winter but has come around really well over the last few weeks. We have repaired the damaged areas with sod from our nursery and hope to have it back in play soon.

 #17 Green as of April 28th

The nursery has shown its value again this season. Having our own sod on site has helped us speed up our recovery time. This season we will be constructing another nursery to give us easier access to sod on the front nine. The new location will be beside the 7th Tee, construction will begin soon.

Nursery

     

  April's Accomplishments

• Prepare equipment for beginning of the season
• Organize maintenance area
• Remove tarps from greens
• Course clean-up
• Safety training with staff
• First Aid/CPR training
• Aerated greens
• Irrigation start up
• Repairs to greens
• First cuts
• "Divot March"
• Hardware and fountain installation
• Clean up bunkers
• Fertilize and chemical applications on Greens/Tees
• Clean up gardens
• Drainage work on #4 tee

April Course Update

April always seems to do this. Just when you think the nice weather is here, we see some more snow. The weather this week has slowed down our course preparation. We have put the first cuts on most of the grass but the wet and cold weather has made getting around the course difficult. The soil temperatures have dropped so the grass is not growing and recovering. Therefore we have left tarps on select greens to keep as much warmth in as possible and we may leave some on into next week until the temperatures improve. Looking at the long range into next week the temperatures are getting back to seasonal and the course will change quickly. 

#18 Green (April 21st - After a hail storm)

 #3 Green (April 23 - yes that is snow on the surface)

In preparation for the season we have completed our First Aid/CPR training for the season. All the managers and some select employees completed this training over the last two days.

First Aid/CPR training

Divot March

A special thanks to all the participants in our 'Divot March' on Saturday. There was 40+ members out to help and in under 2hrs we filled divots on the majority of the tees and all of the fairways. We need some warmer temperatures to get this seed to start to grow, hopefully we see that over the next few weeks. 

 Working our way up the 9th Fairway

Pizza for lunch in front of the Clubhouse

Spring Update April 14

With the weather getting better it was time to start taking our perforated tarps off. This is the first real look at the remaining greens and what we did see was promising. We removed 10 tarps yesterday, 8 greens looked really good. The 10th green is going to need a little extra time to recover from the winter and the putting green is the weakest green we have right now. With the long cold winter and poor surface drainage the putting green took a beating. We will be putting the perforated tarp back on now that we have aerated and overseeded it to help in its recovery.

 Putting Green

 Removing the tarp on #1

 #3 Green

Over the next few days we will aerate, seed and fertilize all the greens. This will be the beginning of our preparation for the course to be open for play. Now that we have had some rain what the course really needs is warmer temperatures. Sunny with +10 degrees will help the grass begin to grow and recover where needed.

 Beginning our spring Aeration

Snow Mould Protection

In the late fall we apply a winter protection chemical to help control snow mould over the winter months. Over the years we have tried new products to insure we are getting the best control at a reasonable price. With the long duration of winter it puts the chemical controls to the test. All and all we have seen minimal damage on the greens/tees/fairways but the rough has been hit in select locations. The majority of these areas will just take some extra time to fill in this spring.

#3 tee - you can see some mould spots on the tee itself - very distinct line between the sprayed tee and the rough 

This is a test plot on #8 fairway that had no chemical applied - shows there was disease pressure over the winter and thankfully we had our protection applied

Spring Update April

It is nice to see the snow going and hopefully the majority of it will be gone over the next few days. There is still a fair amount of frost in the ground and the soil temperatures vary depending on the amount of sunlight the areas are receiving.

 #4 Green

We have removed all the solid tarps now and are seeing minor scaring from ice build-up over the winter. We have covered these areas with perforated tarps to keep the heat in and aid in recovery. 

#9 Green

Hopefully next week we will get a good look at the remaining greens that are covered with perforated tarps. Then we can make plans for any recovery that is needed and get a jump-start on preparing for the season.

 #16 Green - far left side has some ice damage