Saturday, September 24, 2011

Getting ready to head to Naples? Watch this fiirst

I just recieved my weekly email from the USGA Green Section which is the agronomic side of the USGA. In the weekly email the USGA talks about current issues, challenges, and industry updates that are important for everyone to know about. In this week's update is a very good slide show and explaination about the drought gripping the midwest section of the country and how it is affecting golf!  You can check out the presentation by clicking this link >>> http://webcast.usga.org/usga/Drought_2011.pdf

Although we are not as severely affected by the drought, south Florida is still under water restrictions. Our water availability is gauged by the height of Lake Okachoobee which is still two feet lower than the historic average for this time of the year. One of the major reason for this is that we have not had a major tropical system hit Florida in almost three years. This water shortage in Lake "O" is going to cause the water restriction to stay intact and I am expecting in the Spring for the restrictions to worsen to phase II (30% reduction) or possibly phase III (45% reduction). I'm not trying to scare anyone, but this is what I'm seeing in the long term if we do not get a tropical storm to hit Florida's coast this season.

In fact, I received this email from South Florida Water Management...

Despite the recent rainfall, Lake Okeechobee remains far below normal August rainfall provided a steady soaking of the South Florida Water Management District’s (SFWMD) 16-county region, but much more rainfall is needed in anticipation of transitioning into the dry season next month. August rainfall was 3/4 of an inch above average, providing an average of 8.51 inches of rain throughout South Florida.


“The daily rainfall we experienced through much of August was ideal to recharge groundwater and surface water levels,” said Susan Sylvester, SFWMD Chief of the Water Control Operations Bureau. “However, we are entering the home stretch of the wet season, and we’re hopeful that this type of rainfall continues before the dry season sets in.”
From the Upper Kissimmee’s 8.59 inches in August to 9.33 inches in Big Cypress Preserve, rainfall helped to fill canals, lakes, rivers and groundwater. The rainfall was particularly beneficial on the east coast, where drought conditions were substantially alleviated. For the month, eastern Palm Beach County saw 9.84 inches of rain, 1.78 inches above normal, while eastern Broward County received 9.71 inches of rain, 2.28 inches above normal.


However, Lake Okeechobee remains far below normal for this time of year. As the back-up water supply for South Florida, the lake remains below 11 feet NGVD and is more than three feet below normal for this time of year.


In late August, Hurricane Irene remained offshore and drew moisture away from Florida, resulting in lowered rainfall totals, but the overall continuous rainfall throughout the month allowed the SFWMD to store as much rainwater as possible in preparation for the upcoming dry season.
Meteorologists are predicting a drier-than-normal dry season. In South Florida, the daily afternoon thunderstorms typically begin to taper off by mid-October. In the Kissimmee region north of Lake Okeechobee, rainfall totals typically decline even sooner, by the beginning of October.


IF THE REMAINDER OF THE WET SEASON DOES NOT PROVIDE SIGNIFICANT RAINFALL, SUCH AS A WELL-PLACED TROPICAL SYSTEM, THE WATER SHORTAGE IS LIKELY TO CONTINUE THROUGH THE SPRING. WATER SHORTAGE ORDERS REMAIN IN PLACE DUE TO LOW LAKE LEVELS AND THE PENDING DRY SEASON.

Friday, September 16, 2011

More than you ever wanted to know about water movemnet in soil

I want to apologize about the recent "update" on this blog posting that seemed to be incomplete.  It was!  What happened was I was working on this posting behind the scenes, but didn't publish it.  Then one of my friends told me about a new Ipad app that would allow me to work on the blog via my Ipad "on the fly" so to speak.  So I downloaded it and tried it last night...it didn't turn out so well.  I hit the wrong button, what I was working on got posted, and when I tried to fix it the app froze up.  Below is the finalized version of what I was working on.  Sorry for the confusion, but here we go....Soil Hydraulics, fasten your seat belt!

It has been often said amongst turf professionals that if you want a good golf course it takes three things...drainage, drainage, drainage.  If you think about the game of golf the concept is very true.  Good drainage promotes a firmer surface, better growing media for the grass and all of that translates into a happier golfer.  Nobody has ever been turned away from a tee time because the Superintendent has said "Sorry, the course is closed because we just drain too fast and the playing conditions are too firm."

We have all seen drains and we all know their purpose, water goes in the drain and is piped to the lakes.  What is usually unknown is what happens to water in the soil and why do wet spots occur.  In my last posting I explained what we were doing about wet spots and showed you how I was fixing the problem by installing some physical improvements.  This time I want to try and explain why we needed to do what was done.

The most important concept to remember in dealing with water movement through soil is that water does not like layers.  When water being pulled downward by gravity hits a layer, it stops!   Look at the picture to the left and you can see an illustration of what I am talking about.  In the top picture you can see an inverted bottle of water resting on the top of the soil.  If you look at the curved lines and follow them to the left you will see numbers representing time in minutes.  Now notice after 50 minutes the water is not moving any farther down.  The reason is that the water in the soil has hit a horizontal layer.  Notice in the top picture that the water seems to be "boxed in" on the sides.  This is due to vertical layers on each side. Another important rule in soil hydraulics is that water will not move through a layer until the entire uniform soil profile is filled up.  This is why the water filled the entire soil profile within the "box" surrounded by the layers before it moved laterally again.


In the bottom picture, if you  look at the numbers on the left (sorry for such a small picture, it was the only one I could find) and correlate them to the top you can conclude that it took 50 minutes for the water to move straight down from the initial infiltration point, but due to the different layers in the soil it took almost 200 minutes for the water to fill the "box" and move through the vertical layers and begin moving downward again. 

Now that you have the basic concepts of how water is going to move through the soil, imagine the tortured path water has to traverse in the soil on the golf course where the soil profile looks like a bucket of vanilla / chocolate swirled ice cream.  This layer issue is one reason why wet spots form and why after a rain I restrict golf carts for a while.  Even though the surface water has made it's way into the drain basins, the soil water needs time to drain before carts drive over the soggy soil.

A natural question would be "Why is it an issue now when it wasn't right after the course opened?"  Initially when the golf course was built the soil was loose and soil water moved much quicker.  In construction terms, it had fluff in it.  Now that the golf course is a couple years old the soils are tightening up and soil structure is changing a little bit.  Don't worry, adding spot drainage is something that is very normal and needs to be addressed annually as the course matures.  Next year we will do more drainage, the year after that too, and so on.  Remember, to have a great golf course your have to have three very important things...

Monday, September 12, 2011

Summer Projects Update

As many of you know, my staff has been hard at work on hole 14 for the past two weeks.  A few people have asked what we are doing so I thought it would be a good idea to explain in detail what has, and is going on. 

Those that are around in the summer, or even during the occasional rain during season, know that 14 fairway gets to be very soggy in the tee shot landing zones.  Conversely, the roughs on hole 14 begin to burn up very quickly if they are not watered almost daily.  To deal with the different watering demands meant that I had to quit using the sprinklers that watered the fairways and the roughs and use a lot of man power to hand water. The hand watering allowed just the roughs to be watered while withholding water from the fairways to try and dry them down.  The process of hand watering a golf course when you are already very tight on available man power during normal times really puts a damper on what can be done.

To solve the problem I used a very simple solution that is used on another very important part of the golf course, the greens.  Around the greens there are eight sprinkler heads, four that water the green and four that water the green slopes.  A common golf maintenance slang term is "4 in's and 4 out's."  This way, I can control exactly how much water is applied to the putting surfaces by just turning on the in's and I can water the slopes by turning on the out's.  This type of "in and out" set-up is what I did on 14 fairway. 

Originally 14 fairway had two rows of heads, one on each side of the fairway, that rotated 360 degrees.  This watered the fairways and the roughs, but you could segregate the two. If the roughs needed water, the fairways that didn't need water got watered anyway.
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To separate the ability to water the roughs from the fairway I had the crew take one had and split it into two. One will be dedicated to watering the fairways that need very little water (the "in" head) and the other will be dedicated to watering the roughs that need more water (the "out" head). Essentially, two heads rotating 180 degrees.  Now, with increased control on how much water is applied, the playability can be controlled better.
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Part of splitting the single heads into two separate heads meant that we also needed to install additional control wires and that is what the trenches were dug for. We hit lots and lots of rocks but were able to get the trenches cut in.
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Each head has a power wire that runs back to the controller. The controller has a wireless receiver that picks up a signal from the central computer in my office.  The central computer controls which sprinklers come on and for how long. The new heads will be added to a very specific irrigation program that can be manipulated to apply very precise amounts of water to a very specific place without watering where it doesn't need it.  When it comes to water application for golf, its all about control!  By the way, this type of dual head fairway irrigation control is what Atlanta Athletic Club installed on the Highland course to prep for the PGA Tour event.
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Despite all the new added water application control that has been added, there is still a remaining problem. What about when Mother Nature decides she is going to irrigate the course for days on end even though we do not need it? We have to be able to remove the unwanted excess soil moisture. Erick and Casey started the process of installing subsurface drainage in the wet spots on hole 14 so when Mother Nature gives us all of her wonderful rain that we so desperately need, we can still play golf.

The process is really quite simple; excavate a trench 18 inches deep, install a perforated 4 inch pipe, back fill with rock and sod over the rock. The problem is that it is a time consuming ordeal. Just the excavation part of the process with two machines digging usually takes 3-4 hours, and that's if we don't run into a problem.
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This is a drainage problem! This rock was so big a large construction back-hoe almost couldn't pick it up.
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Usually when we find one large rock to remove that means there are others close by and we actually removed three rocks close to the surface about the same size as the one above. Removing these rocks usually tears a lot of ground up. Don't worry, we will fix it. Promise!
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As the drain lines are dug, if you watch the materials being removed you can tell where the issues are even if it is dry. In this picture look and see how white and sandy the soil profile is. All that sand means great water peculation downwards and a nice, firm surface.  This is also one reason why we sand the fairways heavily in the summer.
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In this picture look at the completely different soil profile. It is much darker. The darker color isn't from soil organics, its from a different type of soil. These wet areas that were dug through have a clay type soil called marl.
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Here is the Uniform Field Soil Classification System definition of Marl"Marl consists of fresh water sedimentary deposits of calcium carbonate,often with varying percentages of calcareous fine sand, silt, clay and shell fragments. These deposits are unconsolidated, so marl is usually lightweight. Marl is white or light-gray in color with consistency ranging from soft paste to spongy"

Here's another picture of the material in a wet spot
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When the golf course was reconstructed, the contractor did his best to not use any marl. We have a few small pockets here and there but nothing excessive.

My staff is finishing the last drain on 14 today and then we are moving on to 13 fairway. There are 3-4 areas on the right side of the fairway we will be installing additional drainage into. No additional irrigation heads are planned for 13 at this time.  

I saw this unbelievable rainbow the other day and it just made me think what a wonderful place we live in.  More to come later.
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