Someone pretty smart once said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!" Well I can tell you that they never tried to run a golf course during one of the wettest summers on record. What do I fear...the relentless rain. As I write this post the clouds are piling up out of the southeast over the Everglades and are staged to attack like an imposing enemy waiting for the perfect moment to strike. The perfect moment of weakness for me is when my staff is right in the middle of fertilizing, aerifying, or topdressing. It seems it always rains during one of those critical times when I need it to be hot and dry.
We've all heard the old timers talk about the daily rains at 3 o'clock and you can set your watch by it. Well those good 'ol days are what those of us who are in Naples are living everyday. I can tell you with 100% certainty that it has rained on the golf course every single day for over 15 straight days. Some days it comes down in torrential rains, other days it rains just enough to keep the ground wet. This is by far the wettest I have seen the golf course since the renovation. It is not that we have standing water around the catch basins, it's that the ground is so saturated that the ground is soggy. Even though the golf course is built exceptionally well, that much rain that fast still causes problems such as the one you see in the picture. My staff takes exceptional care of the bunkers on the course and The Country Club of Naples is well known for having great playing conditions in the bunkers. However, what you see is not acceptable. All of the black slim is silt and contaminate from the washed out upper areas that has to be removed by hand. After cleaning out of all the ruined sand, the bunker sand has to be redistributed and the sand depths checked to make sure there is a consistent and uniform depth throughout. This process is very labor intensive and can take 5-7 guys a week to complete.
This course closure was a pretty tame event for us, minus the continual rain. We still aerified everything like always, just didn't get crazy with anything majorly aggressive. Hopefully everyone has heard me talk about affected surface area when it comes to aerification and how important it is. Below is an example of two different tine setups I use on the greens. The set on the left is a summer time set as compared to the right which is a winter time set. In the summer I am looking to maximize the amount of surface area I can affect during core removal, but still have an acceptable healing time. This sort of tine setup will remove approximately 17-20% total surface area and have a healing time of approximately 14 days. The set on the right is used to relieve soil compaction only and not disturb the overall playability of the greens by removing any cores. After the small needle tines are used during the winter a roller is used to smooth the putting surfaces and the course is ready to play.
Core aerification of the playing surfaces is not really that intrusive to the plant during the summer. In comparison, the course is still recovering from the heavy verti-cutting in late July. There's an old Superintendent's saying that goes "It's better to have too much grass than not enough!" and with all the crazy amount of rain we have been having I didn't want to do anything to the course that would cause a slow recovery and turf loss. This time around in the 100 day war I made a few last minute changes to the game plan because of the crazy weather we are experiencing. We didn't do
ANY verti-cutting to the course. Heavy verti-cutting is a very invasive agronomic process that can take some time to heal from. With the days getting a little shorter, Summer creeping towards Fall, and the pressure to get the course back into shape slightly increasing daily, I didn't want to put the course in a crunch time panic to recover due to me being too aggressive too late in the summer. As you can see in the picture below of a fairway vertical mowing implement, the blades are pretty aggressive and specifically designed to rip and tear at the grass. It's a needed process, but timing is everything to allow for adequate healing. This late into the summer this sort of aggressive procedure can be very adverse on playability.
Doing this sort of shredding to the fairways right now would not be a good idea due to the grass stuggling with the super saturated soils.
So outside of the normal punching holes and sanding, it was a mild closure. We are using this slower time after aerification to complete some needed projects though. Our annual Fall palm tree trimming has commenced. I started this project a month earlier this year so I can let the trimmed fronds sit around and dry out before we shred them for mulch. If the materials are dry when they are put into the shredder the process goes a lot faster, thus saving the Club money. Additionally, during our final closing of the summer in a few weeks we will begin the massive job of mulching all the tree rings and plant beds so I will need mountains of mulch. Some new drainage is being installed in the landing zone of #11 fairway where the wet spot is. Trevor will also be installing extra drainage along the cart path on 18 in the few areas that tend to get really soft after a heavy rain or irrigation cycle. The last large project my team will be tackling is the enlargement of a couple tees, #3 red and #13 red. These tees will be expanded immensely to provide desperately needed additional teeing ground. The goal is to be able to move the tees around and spread the wear out on different portions of the tee and alleviate the concentrated abuse in one spot all season long. Once the new teeing ground areas have been prepped, I will order in sod to grass the new tee areas, as well as all the little "spots" on the course that are struggling from whatever abuse they took over the summer. I wanted to wait to sod everything at once as I can order an entire truck load of sod (16 pallets) for $1600 or I can order four pallets of sod for $1000. The shipping is what kills you. So to maximize the Club's dollar we will do everything at once.
The last thing I want to report on are the flowers beds. The flower bed in the front of the Clubhouse will be stripped tomorrow morning and left fallow until the beginning of October. This summer's intense rains have reeked havoc on the flower beds with disease and weed pressure. At this point I would rather look at an empty bed as compared to a weed filled, half dead bed of flowers. During the next few weeks my staff will do needed bed preparations such as soil fumigation and irrigation maintenance on this showcase area for the winter plantings that will go in the second week of October. I have planned another selection of flowers for this area that will provide a wide variety of colors, textures and be beautiful.
I'm sorry I don't have anything earth moving to share this time around. Just remember, it's always better to have too much grass than not enough! With that frame of mind on all this rain and wet conditions, I want to make sure come October we have plenty of grass on the course!!!!!
