Bunker Renovations

 

My apologies for not posting any information since October.  We have been outside taking advantage of some nice late fall weather.  As many of you know, there are a handful of fairway bunkers on the course that do not serve much purpose anymore.  They take away from the beauty of the course and can be a labor nuisance.  More importantly, they act as a double penalty because they are now located behind mature stands of trees.  The first bunkers we are focusing on are #4, #5, #10, and #16 fairway bunkers.  We are simply closing them off and we will plant grass seed in the bare soil in the spring.  These areas will become part of the rough the same as the old bunkers on #13. 

 

 

#4 before

 

 

 

#4 finished

#4 is completed and waiting seed in the spring.  We had to remove nearly 60 tons of contaminated sand and haul in 24 dump truck loads of soil.  Some of the sand was spread out in the rough with our topdresser, some was hauled back to the dump, and some was mixed in with the added clay to amend the soil.

 

 

#5 and #10 before - from #10 tee

The bunkers on #5 and #10 need black dirt hauled in and graded out and they will be completed as well and waiting for seed.  We hauled over 20 dump truck loads of soil to #5.  There was not as much sand in these bunkers and all of it was mixed with the clay to improve the soil structure.

 

#5

#10

 

The bunker on #16 will be worked on as weather allows.

 

 

Frost Advisory

 

We have had a couple frosty mornings now, and will begin having more as we move deeper into fall.  The black and soon to be brown foot prints down the middle of various fairways reminded me not everyone realizes walking on frost covered grass typically results in death.  During conditions that favor frost, the moisture in the grass plants and the dew produced by the grass freezes.  When pressure from animals, people, vehicles, etc is applied to the frosted grass, the cell walls of the plants shatter.  It is similar to breaking spaghetti noodles before they are cooked in boiling water.  The grass typically can not recover and begins showing signs of death within a few hours of when the pressure was applied during the frosty conditions.  Death is more prominent in greens, tees, and fairway because of lower mowing heights.  The crown, or growing point of the plant, is not as protected and more likely to be damaged than taller maintained turf.   

People tracks from walking on frosty grass

Deer tracks from playing on frosty grass

Aerification Update

9-07-12

            The greens have now been aerified.  Weather forced us to slightly alter our plans, but we managed to finish one day later than expected.  I would say it was a success overall.  The front nine greens were aerified and topdressed with sand on Tuesday the 4^th and the back nine and practice green were finished Thursday the 6^th.  We are already seeing great progress on the front nine with the holes closing and the sand settling down into the crowns of the plants.  One big mistake we can make is mowing the greens before they are ready or while they are wet.  This will bring the sand back to the surface and slow the recover process.  With a little patience and cooperation from Mother Nature, we will hopefully be mowing regularly again very soon.  We had grand plans of beginning work on the fairways yesterday and today, but the weather is forcing us to wait for more favorable conditions.  We will start aerifying them next week as weather and event schedules allow.

Aerification Season is Here

 

Its hard to believe Labor Day weekend is here already.  This means aerification season is right around the corner.  I want to let everyone know our tentative schedule and the process we plan to implement. 

Tuesday September 4^th  - Front nine greens and practice green

Wednesday September 5^th – Back nine greens

Thursday, Friday, and the following week until complete – fairways

We will be pulling cores out of the greens the same as we did in the spring.  We will be collecting all the plugs this time, instead of dragging and working them back into the soil.  After collecting the plugs, we will apply a heavy layer of topdressing sand and brush it in to fill the open holes.  Fertilizer has already been applied to promote growth and help the holes close as quickly as possible. Another application of fertilizer will be made at the end of next week.

 

 

We will also be pulling cores on the fairways.  We will drag metal drag mats over the plugs until the soil is pulverized and worked back into the ground.  The thatch will be blown off into the rough and mulched or collected as needed.

 If your asking in your mind about the tees, we aerified them in June.  Since they are Zoysia, they need aerified in the hot weather.  Punching holes in the tees now could leave openings underground leading into the dormant season.  This could potentially result in some winter kill of this warm season turf.

Plans for aerification may be impacted by weather (i.e. Hurricane Isaac).  Revisions to the schedule will be made accordingly.  Thank you in advance for the cooperation and understanding as we will work hard to have the course back in tip-top shape as quickly as possible.

It’s a Bird.  No, it’s a Plane…

            …Nope, it was rain! 

Wow! What an amazing difference rain can have on a golf course.  We received 1.41 inches of rain on August 16^th.  That was the largest rainfall here at the golf course during the growing season in the last year.  Hard to believe, right?  We managed to survive 50 straight days without a rainfall that eclipsed more than .05 inches.  To make circumstances worse, July was the hottest ever recorded.  26 of 31 days surpassed 90 degrees, and 8 of those days broke 100.  July 7^th marked our hottest day of the year at 108 degrees.  This officially makes 3 very difficult grass growing years in a row, and the last 2 years don’t hold a candle to this year.  This being said, we have a few areas to recover.  It is only August 20^th, and our best recovery days are ahead.  The plan on filling in our weaker areas is to continue promoting the growth of the bentgrass.  I think we can close the gap in many areas by fertilizing fairways and slowing the Poa by continuing spraying Velocity.  I anticipate doing a little seeding and patching in some other areas with bentgrass sod from our nursery.  The good news is we have plenty of seed left from last year and I only project a half day’s worth of seeding compared to the week of sun-up to sun-down seeding we did last September.

Rainfall totals recorded at DCC this year:

Jan - 4.2”                                Apr - 1.80”                              July – 0.14”              

Feb - 0.49”                             May – 1.75”

March – 1.71”                        June – 1.05”

           

I would like to ease a few minds about the Velocity before we get too far away from the subject.  In no way did Velocity cause the bad areas we currently have in our fairways.  Lack of rain and irrigation, heat, and disease were the root of all our problems.  Our May and June applications of Velocity increased our percentage of bentgrass more than I ever imagined and I believe our “bad areas” would have been much worse if there was more Poa.  Our best estimation in early spring was that we had maybe 40 percent bentgrass and 60 percent Poa.  Now we estimate having 70 percent bentgrass and 30 percent Poa.  If all goes according to plan, we should continue increasing our percentage of bentgrass over the next couple months.

#1 in August of 2011

#1 one year later

Bee Hive Removal

            If you had the opportunity to play golf over the weekend, you might have noticed a tree missing on the back, left of #15 green.  Removal of 100 year old white oak trees is far from the top of my list of things to do, especially when the temperature is over 100 degrees before noon.  When an eight foot section of the trunk is home to an 80,000 plus honeybee colony it moves up the list at an alarming rate.  After exhausting the options for removing the bees, taking down the tree was the wisest decision.

  

To left: Actual size of the bee colony

         
     Other options included:

1. Remove the queen bee so the colony follows her to a different location.  It was impossible to get inside the tree and find her.
2. Kill bee colony with poison.  Other bees would enter the empty colony and take poison honey back to local hives, in which we become liable at nearly $1000/hive lost.  Plus, Dave Burns, the certified bee keeper of Long Lane Honey Bee Farms, said the comb was too tight for chemicals to work effectively.
3. Seal off entry to bee colony.  The bees will work to find other means of entering and exiting the tree and this would be a temporary solution.
4. Do nothing.  The colony continues to multiply at a rapid rate and eventually part of the population would swarm out of the tree to find a new hive.  An allergic golfer gets stung by bees in which death can occur in a matter of minutes.

     Since it was determined the tree was rotten all the way into the ground, removing it made the most sense.  Some of the benefits include:

1.      Golfer and worker safety

            2.      100% removal of the bee colony and hive
            3.      Healthier green from removing a partially dead tree
            4.      The bee problem has no chance of reoccurring at this particular site

To left: Keith Klismith of Klismith Tree Service suspended in the top of the tree

Velocity Report

            Well, I expected to have some fun pictures to show from our May Velocity spray, but the affects weren’t glaringly obvious.  We did see the Poa annua turn a yellowish color and stop producing seeds.  The Velocity also regulated the growth of both the bentgrass and Poa.  We started to notice seeder lines of young bentgrass plants reappearing from the work completed last fall.  This means the bentgrass is out-competing the Poa. 

            #12 Collar - Dark green lines are bentgrass out-competing the weakened yellow Poa.

            #16 fairway - 1 of 4 check plots on the golf course.  (others in #2, #10, and #13)

           The second application of Velocity was applied  June 13^th.  I would expect the results to be more noticeable this time because it is warmer than it was in May.  We added some iron to the spray to help mask any potential discoloration that might occur.  The check plots are still out there so we can monitor the progress.  Feel free to stop me on the course and ask questions about them.  Hopefully, I will have better pictures this month, or maybe hopefully not.

Blue Greens…or Green Blues?

 

If you were one of the lucky ones able to play golf today, you might have noticed a blue-ish color to the greens.  We added a pigment to the spray tank and I thought you might like to know why.  The blue-green pigment aids the turf in a few different ways.  It blocks harmful UV rays from the sun similar to the way sunscreen does for a human’s skin.  In turn, the grass plants can take in more of the “good light” from the sun increasing photosynthesis and nutrient or chemical uptake.  Studies have also shown that grass plants are able to cool their temperatures under these applications.  I think of it as a type of  umbrella.  A side benefit is that you can see where you have sprayed without the use of foam marker, which can burn the grass during warm weather conditions.

The Battle Continues...and is about to begin

It's a beautiful Saturday in early May and it seems we can't get out from between the rock and the hard place. 

Battle #1: Getting the speed up in the greens. 

     After core aerifying the greens, we received 4 frosty mornings which severely slowed our growth and recovery efforts.  Finally, this past week the greens have made great progress in getting closed back up.  In order to get some speed back quicker we have lowered our cutting height and changed rollers on one of the greens mowers. In doing so, some of the topdressing sand has pulled back up to the surface keeping us in the same boat as a few days ago.  With more favorable conditions in the forecast, we will grow out of the sand and the holes will make their final push to close off.  Hopefully, sooner than later.  If it makes that angsty, sick feeling in my stomach, I surely understand golfing perspective.  Thank you for the patience and understanding. 

...And now that the greens have been mowed this morning, cloud cover rolled in and dew reformed making it look like the mowers never left the shop. 

Battle #2:  Our old foe, Poa.

     This coming week of May 7th, I have penciled in to spray Velocity on our fairways, approaches, and collars.  For those who do not know, Velocity is a herbicide that aids in the elimination of Poa annua (annual bluegrass) in bentgrass.  We will be applying Velocity at the low rate.  Since this is an ongoing process, we want the Poa to transition out and the bentgrass to fill the vacating spots.  The expectations are that the treated areas will turn off color for a period of a few days and then return back to how we see them today.  Some areas of higher Poa populations will most likely start to thin down.  The needs of those areas will be addressed as they arise.  We will have various check plots in the fairways to monitor our progress, so expect to see pictures in future blogs. 

Please feel free to contact the grounds department with any questions.

Although it is May 1st, let me reach back into the archives and post a publication from the end of January.

A Brief Winter Update

            Winter update hardly seems the appropriate title with this unusually warm weather.  I must admit I have been looking forward to a little snow so I could try out some of these great sledding hills we have around the golf course.  Instead of toboggan building we have put an emphasis on rebuilding some of our course accessories and doing some tree trimming. 

            If your golf game has blessed you with a nice right hander’s slice, I’m sure you’ve had many great looks at the two huge, beautiful Beech trees in the right rough of #1.  Since they were in desperate need of trimming and we needed wood to make new tee markers, this seemed like the perfect fit.  After all, if its good enough for some uses in Mercedes Benz and Budwieser, it should be good enough for our tee markers.  We cut all branches with a 3 – 4 1/2 inch diameter into five inch tall pieces.  We routored the edges for a softer look on the tops and painted a recessed band around the side to correspond with each tee position.  After a few more coats of clear, weather protection they will be ready to go.

Beech tree on #1

New tee markers

      Since the weather has been conducive for getting outside, we were able to get some tree trimming accomplished as well.  The main focus was to open some areas up to receive more air and light and bring back intended golf shots to certain tees.  All trees between #17 green and #8 tee have been trimmed close to thirty feet above the ground.  Most undergrowth on the hillsides around #8 and #18 tee has been cut back.  Extensive  clearing has taken place at the following tee complexes:   #8, #9, #14 ladies, #16, #17 both sides, and #18.  This will help create a better look at each hole from the tee and allow better use of the teeing surfaces.

      All of our cutting units have been sharpened, and now we are addressing winter maintenance and repairs.  George has been working very hard at his goose patrol duties. The open water has kept the geese very persistent, but he is holding up his end of the bargain.  Hopefully, everyone enjoyed a wonderful holiday season and is dreaming of green grass.  Feel free to contact me down at the maintenance building. My door is always open.

Welcome to the grounds maintenace blog for Danville CC.  I would like to use this blog as a way to communicate the maintenance side of the golf course to the membership.  This is my first blog, so hang in there with me as we move forward.  I visualize this as being fun and informative.  I think it will be a great way to keep you updated on what we are doing with the golf course and why.  I would also like to run a twitter account for more brief and "in the now" information and link the two together.  Shall we see what happens?