Bunkers

     With my summer help back in College it has been a struggle to get bunkers taken care of.  2 of my college boys still work 1/2 days 2 days a week.  Yesterday I had them work on bunkers only to have the work they did get washed out by a down pour at the end of the working day.  It will be a big relief to get these bunkers fixed.  Years of washouts and bunkers that do not drain.  Even after a rain event we had yesterday the bunkers will still be playable with minimal washing.  Bunker work will start after the Borgia men's outing on September 19th.  Some of our bunkers are in very bad shape.  We are going to start removing the sand out of them.  We will play them as ground under repair. Any bunker that still functions will be maintained until construction begins.  The bunker work will be a huge improvement to your course.  Bunkers that do not wash and hold water will be a welcomed sight for me and my crew.  With yesterdays rain that bring our rain total for the month of August to 9.5 inches.  That is over 3 times the average for August.

Damage to 4 green

We had 2 Cicada Killers making a nest in #4 green.  Sometime last night a Varmint of some kind tried to dig up the 2 spots leaving quite a mess.  Cicada Killers have been terminated.  Spots have been filled back in.  We will have to plug the spots on Monday. 

 This is what I walked up to this morning

 

Here is Cicada Killer with a  Cicada

Sod work

     We have been busy the last couple of days fixing some of the bad areas around a number of our greens.  The bentgrass from our greens has encroached into the surround turf.  A lot of the bentgrass burn out during the recent heat spells we had last month.  We cut out all the dead bentgrass and sodded the approaches with Zoysia and the green surrounds we used Turf Type Fescue.  The Fescue is a lot more heat tolerant than the Bentgrass.  I would like to continue sodding more Turf Type Fescue around all of our green surrounds.  We will also over seed the surrounds with the same Turf Type Fescue.  Approaches we fixed were 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16 and 17.  Green surrounds we fixed were 9,10, 11, 15, 16,  and 17.  Below are a few pictures of the process.

 #12 approach removing old sod

 

Old sod removed ready for new Zoysia

 

Finished

 

Laser Leveling 5 blue and 12 white tee's

     We are back leveling 2 more tee's.  5 blue and 12 white.  This is very labor intensive project.  All of the old sod has to be removed from tee.  After sod is removed Schafer-Meyer comes in and tills up the tee so the Laser Level can do its job.  Takes more time to set up the laser than it does leveling the tee.  After tee is leveled it is time to sod tee.  We use big roll sod.  The big rolls are 3.5 feet wide by about 80 feet long.  We use our tractor with a special attachment to roll the sod out.  We pull sod tight and fix any bad spots.  Little topdressing on the seams turn the water on and we are done.  A flat tee to hit off of.

Tee after sod removed

Tilling the tee

 

 

After tee is tilled

 Laser leveling

 Rolling out sod

Fixing seams

Rain Rain Go Away

     August 15th and the Golf Course has received 8.52 inches of rain this month alone.  We still have half the month to go.  Since June 30th we have recorded a whopping 17.74 inches of rain.  The good news is at least the temperatures have fallen into the upper 70's to low 80's.  The chance of getting a root damaging fungus or just plain ole wet wilt are going down.  Wet wilt is a problem when temperature's are in the mid to upper 90's.  The green profile fills up with too much moisture.  Roots cannot get the much needed oxygen.  The plant cannot transpire to help cool itself and use up the moisture in the root zone.  The plant over heats and dies.  With the cooler temperatures we can avoid this problem.  The biggest problem with all the rain is getting our mowing and projects done.  Today we were going to over seed all of our thin greens.  We will try to get this important task done in the next couple of days.  I plan on over seeding at least 2 times this fall to get greens back. We will start to mow our good greens daily.  All of the thin greens we will continue to alternate mowing and rolling until they fill in.  Here is a little trivia for you. How many bentgrass seeds are in a pound of seed?  The answer is 6 million.  Bentgrass is a very small seed.   Be careful out there the golf course is saturated and you could easily slip and fall on the many slopes we have.

Greens Update

     We have had a new development to our green problem.  Dr. Miller sent our samples off to have a Nematode count done.  He felt we had too much damage to our root system and he was not totally convinced it was due because of disease and the heat.  He was right.  Our Nematode counts came back high with two types of Nematodes, Ring and Lance.  The Ring Nematode count was at 630.  That is 130 points over the threshold.  Our Lance Nematode count came back at 1230.  That is 10 times over the threshold of 120.  Needless to say this is serious.  Nematodes are parasitic feeding off the root system of the bentgrass.  Damage is seen most of the time in the hot summer.  Bentgrass stop growing roots when the soil temperature is above 85 degrees.  Feeding causes the bentgrass not to be able to take up moisture and nutrients from the soil.  Roots start to die back.  The plant can not compete with the Nematodes if it can't grow new roots.  Turf begins to thin and die. 
     If you remember we had a Nematode problem last year.  The species we had last year was Root-knot.  We used a new product called Avid and eradicated them.  Our greens turned around and we did not have anymore problems.  This season I decided I would use a preventative approach to keeping Nematodes at bay.  I sprayed 3 applications of Avid in May, June and July.  The test show we did not have any Root-knot Nematodes.  Avid had no effect on the Lance Nematode and we did not get control of the Ring Nematode.  Last years Nematode count showed we had Lance Nematode at a count of 60 well below the threshold of 120.  But something happened and the Lance Nematode count exploded this year.  After researching I have found out that the Lance Nematode is one of the hardest Nematodes to control.  With today Nematicides, control options are limited.  Fortunately I have found some older Nematicide that should work on these nasty critters.
     We have applied the Nematicide down to our worst greens.  I am going to treat all greens but it has been raining the past 2 days.  We will get it out as soon as possible.  We have been fertilizing greens weekly to get them to grow out of this problem.  We have raised mowing height and are alternating mowing and rolling.  We will over seed all thin areas and plug and sod the bigger voided areas.  It will take some time but we will recover from this.  We will slowly lower height back down on our better greens and continue to walk mow the weaker ones until they are healed.   Thank you for your patience at this time.  I know the greens are not rolling the way you expect.  We will work very hard to get them back in shape.  Below is a picture of a Lance Nematode.  They are about 1mm long.  One of the largest Nematodes.