Winter Golf

     I know weather has been very mild for November and December.  We have had a few frost delays but not many.  Here is a good video from the USGA that explains the damage walking on frosted greens can do.  Remember when we have a frost delay all members must start on hole #1 no exceptions.  If you jump to #4, #7 or #10 you will reach greens that still have frost on them.  Playing from #1 all green will have time to thaw before first golfer reaches them. 

https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/course-care/green-section-record/59/issue-20/frost-delay-its-worth-the-wait.html

Cart Paths

      We have been busy replacing some bad cart paths.  Dobsch Construction is doing an outstanding job.  All sod work is being done by my staff.  So far we have done #18 from top of hill all the way to green.  #1 bad spots coming up to green and then around curve up behind green.  #15 at the bottle neck no more dip in path.  We still have to do #5 green, "#12 cart path up by 13 white tee and the rest of #18 and the cart path down to #9 green and #7 tees.  We are not going to stop with these paths I hope to add more.  I am looking at fixing #7 path from bridge to 8 tees and replacing # 8 path all the way to new path at green.  Our goal is to take out all the old 5 foot wide paths and replace with 6 foot. Most of our 5 foot paths are on the back nine which is the hardest paths to access with concrete.  Here are a few picture of our work.

Removing old path #18

It took 7 truck loads to pour the entire length of #18.

                                                                       

    #18 path is finished  

 #1 first part completed

#15 looking back to tees.

#15 completed

Greens

      

     Big difference a year makes.  We have been getting numerous positive comments on the condition of our greens.  My staff and I appreciate it very much.  Summer is not over yet and Nematodes are still present in our greens profile.  We need to make it through August and we are home free.  So what has changed from this season to last season.  One big difference is I stopped trying to kill Lance Nematode with conventional  Nematicides.  This did not work and only made the problem worse.  The years up to the time we found out we had a Nematode problem we did not treat our greens for Nematodes.  We would have a few problems during the summer the greens would repair themselves or we would plug the bigger areas.  I always thought those problems were from drought stress.  We now know it was Nematodes.  Once I found out trying to kill Nematodes with Nematicides was hurting me I looked for biological controls to fight this pest.  The biological products I found have some activity on the Nematodes and there eggs.  These products also have an added benefit they help build soil biology which give the Bentgrass plant deeper and stronger root systems. Chitin, Yucca, Harpin protein and compost are the products I add to my program.  Chitin is the first product I found that builds soil, tricks the plant to defend itself.  Chitin is ground up Crab Shells.  I am using this in the liquid and dry form.  We are using 6 different products that have liquid or soluble Chitin in them.  My greens granular fertilizer we use after aerification has the dry form of Chitin in it.  I am also using a product that has Harpin protein in it that helps reduce Nematode eggs and it also helps build soil biology.  Yucca plant extract is a natural wetting agent and it also builds soil biology. The last product we are using is compost.  I am mixing compost with our aerification sand and incorporating it in the green profile when we aerate greens.  The compost helps build our soil biology and it has a fungus in it that feeds on Nematodes. As of today this program is working.  These products are not in the main stream golf course fertility and pesticide warehouses.  It is sort of like taking a supplement or herb instead of a pharmaceutical pill to treat some disorder. This golf course is a testament that these products have a positive effect to our greens.  If we can get to September without significant damage This will be the best year we would have in a long time.  These products will also work on your landscape, garden and house plants.  Google Crab Shell meal or extract, yucca plant extract or harpin protein.  Thanks for reading my blog.

Course update

     It has been awhile since I last updated my blog.  Lots of thing have been going on.  Spring is here and summer is not far off.  Over the past winter we cut down 40 trees and cleaned up the tops of 10 trees to the right of #1 green.  I can tell you this my staff and I are tired of cutting timber.  These tree removals will improve playability of the golf course.  We still have work to be done.  All of the stumps have to be remove.  My stump guy has us on the schedule.  When stumps are cleaned up we will sod cart paths at #1 green and #10 green.  This will be a big improvement to these 2 areas.

     The Driving Range Tee, #4, #6 and #9 Black tees got a makeover this month.  We stripped all sod off the tees, tilled them up and laser leveled all four tees.  It took almost 2 weeks to get new Zoysia sod.  The rain kept sod farm too wet to cut zoysia sod.  We laid sod and then it decided to turn unseasonably cool.  The zoysia on the tees is finally sending roots down.  We are trying to get these tees open by end of May. 

                               Tilling up Tee                                            Laser leveled tee

                                                                           

laying sod

completed

    We just had Commercial Turf here to root prune all trees along fairways, tee and greens.  This will help our turf in all areas.  Trees will out complete turfgrass for water and food.  We will need to redo this about every 2 to 3 years.  The machine has 2 knifes 12'' apart cutting 9 inch deep slit.  This does not harm the trees.  We were cutting feeder roots just on the edge of the drip line.

  

Big Freeze

      It is that time of year.  With the bitter cold temperatures the ground has frozen solid.  Later in the week we will have temperatures climb up to near 50 degrees.  Greens need to thaw to at least 2'' before play is allowed.  The green surface needs sunlight to help in the thawing process.  Snow cover will slow this process up.  When snow melts we will be checking greens multiple times a day when we have at least 2'' of thaw in all our greens we will open.  Root shearing can cause severe turfgrass problems.  Diagram below show how root shearing is done by playing on thawing greens.  Thanks for your cooperation.   

Tree work

     We have been very busy working on underbrush and tree removal the past 2 months.  We started with underbrush to the east side of 10 green and worked our way down the fence to 12 black tee.  Air movement is what we are trying to enhance on 10 and 11 greens.  The next  thing was to remove 10 trees around 10 green.  This will help with light, air movement and help establish much better turf on the back side of 10 green.  We will be removing 4 trees to the south and east of 11 green also.  These trees are shading 11 green.  All trees removed were trees selected by the USGA Agronomist John Daniels during his visit last summer.  There are 2 trees at #11 we are cutting down because they are leaning heavy over the fence.  If they fall it will destroy the fence giving the cattle access to the golf course.

     Some of the trees removed from #10 were in bad shape.  We cut two trees down that were hollow.  the picture below is the tree that was right next to cart path leaving 10 green.

     After we remove the stumps we are going to grade and sod both sides of cart path behind 10 green.  This will be a huge improvement.  Trees will not allow good turf to grow under them.  Below are some pictures of both 10 and 11.

10 green

We chipped the tops

10 green

11 green

We cut brush and then chipped it with our chipper

11 green completed

My staff has worked very hard.  We were able to cut down and clean up 2 trees a day unless play was heavy.  We had a few days the golf course was extremely busy for winter.

Course Update

      It has been awhile since my last post.  We have been very busy.  We have a number of project that have been completed.  One of the biggest accomplishments is our greens are almost healed up from the Nematode and Root Rot issues from July.  This was the hardest summer I have ever had in my 35 years as a Golf Course Superintendent. I am optimistic this will not happen again. I have a different approach for next year.  I am  build my soil biology up with biological products that will grow greater root mass in our greens and have a negative effect on Nematodes.  Some of these biological product are in fact natural Nematicides.  I have always used biologicals but not to this extreme.  Some of these products  like crab shell meal, soap box tree extract, compost, sesame seed oil all have some degree of control to Nematodes.  I am also using some forms of Bacteria and Fungi products that also have  control against Nematodes. I know I will not kill all of them but if I can keep numbers low enough to get our greens through July and August with minimal damage that is a win.

Here are the list of project we completed since  August.  

• #4 fairway bunker was rebuilt.
• #8 cart path from ditch in front of green up past merge from #17 was fixed.
•  #1 trees to north of green were removed to help with turf loss on right side of green below bunker. 
•  Aerified all greens.
•  DryJect all greens.
• Fixed cart path washouts on holes 6 and 12. 
• Sprayed second application of Bermuda grass control on fairways and tees.  
• Fix sink hole that developed at the front entrance from bad culverts.

     #4 fairway bunker was reshaped and bottom was raised about a foot.  New drain lines and sand installed.  This was a much needed improvement.  

Schaefer-Meyer edging bunker

#4 bunker finished

     #8 cart path was in bad shape.  We had about a 2 foot ditch running under the path.  We also put a culvert in at ditch crossing.  No more carts running through water.  Dobsch Construction did great work.

You can see the ditch running under path

Ready for concrete

Just finished second pour.

Sod going down.

     We removed some big trees to north of #1 green.  It is very hard to get any turf to grow near the cart path.  The large trees were taking all of the moisture.  This will help us to maintain better quality turf from the bunker to cart path turn behind #1 green.  We still have to remove the under brush and clean up the tree tops.

Before from back of green

Before front right of green

After from behind green

After from front right of green

     We aerified all of greens twice this fall.  In late September we punch holes with our ProCore.  This is the first time we were able to aerify, topdress, brush, apply fertility and water in one day.  We used 3/8 tines.  Most holes were filled in by the end of the week.

Picture taken after we brushed greens .

     October 5th we did a new process called DryJect.  DryJect takes water to create a void in profile of green and sand is sucked back into the hole.  I ordered some finely ground compost and we mixed it with our dry sand.  We used 80 lbs of compost to 2000 lbs of sand.  This makes roughly a 95% sand to 5% compost blend.  The compost will give our greens organic matter to help fight off Nematodes.  The compost product has shown some good success in Florida.  We will do this again next March before we core aerate.  DryJect is very labor intensive.  The DryJect crew brought 2 machines.  We needed 3 people per machine to keep our blended sand in machine as it went across green.  We used 24 tons of sand and it had to  be hand loaded into the hopper of the DryJect machine.

Loading DryJect machine

3''X3'' hole pattern

     The cart paths that cut across the fairways on holes 6 and 12 were repaired.  This is not the first time we have repaired these two areas.  Water uses the edge of path on 6 and it cuts out the sod.  Once water get a channel it keeps on eating it out.  #12 cart path is a different situation.  Before we put the catch basin in at the fence any big rain event we would get mud and silt would come down from the farm to the north of the golf course.  Just before you make the turn to go across the fairway we have about 1 foot of mud and silt that was washed down from the farm above us.  This changed the drainage pattern of the rough and fairway.  Water now sets along the cart path when it used to flow down the hill to the ditch.  We will see if our fix will work.  We might have to put a catch basin in at cart path if it comes back.

Cart path at 12 Fairway.

     The past 3 years we have been spraying the bermuda grass encroachment in our fairways and tees.  This is a slow process Bermuda grass is relentless.  Just like the Energizer bunny it just keeps going. We are making some progress.  I am using two different herbicides to take the Bermuda grass out of our Zoysia fairways.

The off color turf is Bermuda grass

Closeup of Bermuda grass injury from herbicides.

     Lastly we found a sink hole at the front entrance.  After some exploratory digging we found the problem.  We have 2 culverts that merge together at our driveway and Country Club Rd.  The old forms that were used to connect the two pipes into the concrete box culvert going under Country Club Drive rotted away and the gravel under the asphalt was washing into the box culvert.  Luckily we found this before a vehicle did.  We replace both rusted culvert pipes. We replaced them with ADS plastic pipe, concreted it back to the box culvert running under Country Club Rd.  We need a good rain so the rock fill can settle.  After fill has settled we will repair asphalt.

Old culvert running into box culvert.

  

Installing new culvert pipe.

Concreting pipes into box culvert.