Fall Green Aerifacation

   

Green aerification will take place 9/8/15 and 9/9/15

 

      It is that time of the year for our fall aerification.  I know this is not a popular cultural practice.  It is not popular with my staff.  It is hard work for everyone on staff.  It is one of the most important cultural practices we do.  With out aerification greens would slowly deteriorate.  They would become spongy, would not hold golf shot, and ball roll would be very inconsistent.  Maintenance wise Isolated dry spots would increase disease and insect damage would go up. That means more money spraying chemicals to control all these problems that would arise from not aerating.
      Bentgrass is a huge thatch producer and the only way to eliminate thatch is to core aerate.  When we core aerate we remove the core and open a channel into the root zone of the green.  This allow air to flow freely to the root zone.  Turf needs the air for two thing, 1.  Turf needs oxygen to grow it absorbs oxygen from the root system.  2.  Air  help dry the roots system out which encourages deeper roots. Deeper roots firms greens up to accept golf shots.  A dryer root system has less disease and insect pressure. 
     Green are in great shape at this time and they will heal quickly from aerification and be better than they were before.  We will aerate front nine on Tuesday 9/8/15 and the back nine on Wednesday 9/9/15.  9 holes will be open each day until around 3:30 p.m.  when all 18 holes will open up.  Thank you for your patience.

Projects

     Lots of things have been happening on the course in the last couple of weeks.  First of all we got the tee's and fairway aerated.  We used our Procore on the tees and punched lot of holes.  It took three days to get this done.  We saved all the plugs from the tees to use on washouts and holes along cart paths.  We were waiting for a rain to aerate our fairways.  Fairways were getting dry and I need mother nature to add some moisture so our Aerway aerifier could penetrate through the turf.  With the wet ground we could get 6 to 7 inches down.  The last big project to get done was we removed all of the stumps on the course.  We had 33 stumps removed and it took the man 2 hours to complete.  It will take us a lot longer to remove all the excess chips and soil he left behind.  Below are some pic of all the jobs.

Nick aerating tee's.  Aeration helps remove thatch allow for better gas exchange for the turf.

 

This is what is left when done aearting

All plugs are pushed to ends of tee's and picked up.  We saved all plugs.

Dan using Aerway to aerate fairways

It leaves 1/2 inch wide slits 6 inches deep



We roll tuffs down after it is aerated

 This is our stump man grinding big oak stump on left side of 15 fairway.

That stump was about 3 to 4 feet in diameter.  Took him less than 10 minutes to remove.

Course update

     The rain finally ended but the heat and humidity was turned way up.  I still have not irrigated fairways or roughs this season.  Tee's have only been irrigated 4 times this year.  Like I said in my previous post I have never went this long without irrigating fairways and roughs.  Dan and I only hand watered greens 2 times before the month of July.  Since July it has been almost everyday.
     We did have some problems develop on our greens.  We noticed that 4 and 5 developed a lot of yellow patches 2 day after a fungicide application.  This was very  puzzling because we had our spray program up to date.  I sent a sample off to the University of Missouri and the results were quite alarming.  Dr. Miller found Nematodes.  Nematodes are a parasitic worm that feed off the root system of plants.  A few will not hurt the plant it can out grow the feeding but if you have too many the root system begins to die and plant  stresses.  As the plant is in stress it is susceptible to disease and heat stress.  This all happen right when the temperature rose above 90 degrees.  After the diagnoses we treated all greens with a insecticide that controls Nematodes.  Greens are making a come back they look much better than they did 10 days ago. This has been a year of first times for me.  I have never had a problem with Nematodes in 30 years in the business.  You can bet we will have Nematode control in next season spray program.  (See pictures below).
     Since the heat set in and # 4 and # 5 greens were invaded by Nematodes.  We have done some cultural practices differently.    We are now walk mowing greens 4, 5, 10-12.  The height of cut has been raised on these greens.  We are alternating mowing and rolling.  This elevates a lot of stress to the greens.  Fans have been set out on greens 10 and 12.  The air movement help cool the greens.  A 3 to 5 mph wind can make all the difference in a green surviving heat stress.  These changes are temporary,  we should be back to normal by September.  Thanks for you patience.

 # 5 Green July 20 Notice yellow spots

 Close up # 5

 # 5 green July 30

 Nick walk mowing # 5

Pic of Nematode feeding on root.  Nematode at top of root

Video

For those of you that do not watch Channel 5 news here is a good segment on the rain and course conditions for 5 St. Louis golf courses.  They sum it up for all of us. Hit the link below.

http://www.ksdk.com/videos/sports/golf/2015/07/11/golf-supers-somehow-make-courses-playable/30030179/

Course update

     It looks like the rain will finally be leaving us after today.  Here is rain totals.  For the month of June we received a total of  9 inches.  8 inches fell the last half of the month.  July we have already received 4.31 inches of rain.   In the last 4 weeks we have had 12 inches of rain.  Needless to say the golf course is very wet.  This is a first for me,  July 10th and I have not irrigated fairways yet this season.
       With all the moisture this can cause a number of problems on the course.  Temperatures are going to be in the low 90's this weekend with high humidity.  The high humidity will hamper the soils ability to dry out.  Water logged soils are not good.  Turfgrass needs oxygen.  Oxygen is taken up by the roots system.  If water is in the root zone very little oxygen is taken up.  Roots will begin to die.  Another problem with saturated soils is disease pressure.  The rough will have an explosion of disease this weekend.  The best thing that can happen is cooler temperatures or for the soils to dry out.  That will not happen soon enough.  Compaction will be another issue with waterlogged soils.  Compaction is easily corrected with aerification.  We are scheduled to aerate our fairways and tees this month.
     We are taking measures to help dry our greens out.  We have started to spike our greens to open them up so they will dry down quicker.  We are making slits in the green on 1.5 inch x 2 inch pattern.   Spiking is a form of aerification that is not as aggressive as punching holes. It is less disruptive but still gets the job done.  We then mow behind the spiker to smooth putting surface  If greens stay too wet we will lose turf there first.  I am not worried about disease on the greens we are on a preventative spray schedule and should be o.k.
     Cart will be on cart paths only for the next couples of day.  Please be careful.  Try to avoid passing other carts.  Please be cautious when walking to and from your ball especially on slopes.  You can easily slip and fall.  Thanks for your patience.  This has been a summer to remember.

Dan spiking greens

 

After spiking turf is tuff up

Tim mowing after spiking

Chapstick is on mowed part of green much smoother

    
      

Green Damage

     I love nature.  Animals on the golf course makes this place so special.  You can play a round of golf and see deer, fox, numerous birds, bobcats, squirrels, rabbits and many more species.  I have no problem with wildlife until they start to damage the course.  We had a spot on the front of 1 green develop on Monday.  I suspect it is a female  fox, coyote or dog urine kill.  This spot was about 10 inches in diameter in the front right of the green.  We had to plug out the spot.  The spot was a perfect circle.  Below you will see before and after photos.  About 3 years ago we had a fox dig a hole in this green down about 1 foot.  I hope this is all the damage we get.

 

Course Update

     Rain finally ended on Friday.  We  received 6.5 inches of rain last week.  The golf course is very wet as of today.  We got very little  mowing done last week and it shows badly.  We are mowing everything today.  Hopefully the rain stays away for tomorrow.  Any amount of moisture will saturate the soil and make it difficult to mow.  It takes 2 full days of mowing to get all of our roughs mowed one time.  We mowed fairways today and will mow them again tomorrow.  Please have patience we will catch up on the mowing.  The bunkers were destroyed by last weeks rain event.  We are working on them and hope to have them fixed by end of the day on Wednesday.  Green speed has slowed, it will take a little time to get greens back to were they were before all the rain.  Dry weather is what we need forecast looks like we are not going to have much of that this week.  We will keep our fingers crossed.