Sun shiny day

Bermuda grass needs at least 8 hours of direct sun light a day to perform its best. It is by far the most sun loving grass there is.  The more sun it gets, the more abuse it can take. That is important to remember when it comes to greens as the putting surfaces are the areas that take the most abuse: we cut them the lowest, we constantly are trying to verti-cut, roll, brush for better and better playability, and every person that plays the course uses them. So when a green doesn't get full sun it can become a problem. 

Here is a picture of hole 17 this morning (I'm looking backwards at the hole). The right side of the green is covered in shade, this is also the side where everyone enters and leaves the green. The compounding foot traffic and shade is an issue. As you can see it's 10:45 and there is still shade on the green. The yellow arrow shows the location of the sun. 

As a turf manager I am always worried about this time of year because the days are getting shorter and shorter as the sun sets into the southern skyline. In this picture looking westerly you can see how much farther the sun's path will sink before the winter solstice. The blue line is the winter solstice, the yellow is the current path of the sun and the red line is the summer solstice. 

Here's another look to show how far the sun sinks in the sky. This view is directly overhead of the 17th green. Again, blue is the lowest point in the sky, yellow is today and red is the highest.  

To help combat the wear and tear the plant receives while the days are getting shorter and shorter an old trick is to increase the mowing height of cut just a little bit. Our usual height if cut this time of year is around 0.125" or 1/8". When we get deep into winter I will raise the height of cut on the putting surfaces to 0.135"or 0.140". This might not seem significant, but to the plant it is a massive increase in its ability to produce food from photosynthesis. The small increase in height if cut will yield approximately a 40% increase in food production within the plant. Remember, the leaves of the plant are like little solar panels. The larger the leaf (the plant's solar panel) , the more light it can capture to use for food production (power). 

In the end my job is all about having a healthy turf on the course and excellent playability. Yet, the biggest problem with a golf course is that you have to leave it outside!!! All of those "outside" factors lead to a lot of things outside of my control...like not enough sun or too much rain. My job is about understanding the neaunces of the course and being proactive so the membership doesn't see the result of all the things outside of my control. 

By the way, this entire blog posting was done on my phone while on the course.  I have an app called Sun Seeker on my phone that tracks the sun's movements. It's great at evaluating shade issues and helping explain the importance of tree shade control. 

USGA REPORT PROBLEM FIXED

I have changed some settings on the USGA report to make it available to everyone. 

USGA report card

The USGA Agronomist, Todd Lowe, was recently out for our annual Fall checkup.  The purpose of the visit is to evaluate how successful our summer programs were, as well as help us develop a successful stategy for the upcoming winter golfing season.  The report from the USGA Agronomist is available by clicking the link below. 

2013's Fall report from the USGA

Speckled Greens

On Monday of this week I had my staff apply some soluble fertilizer to the greens. The positive of the soluble fertilizer is that it is fast acting and gives immediate nutrition to the plant. The negative is that there is a serious chance of burning the plant from the material. This application was done an attempt to take advantage of the last course closure of the year, as well as to take advantage of having no golfers on the course to be able to apply the required water immediately after the application to avoid potential tip burn...obviously my team failed to accomplish the "avoid tip burn" part. 

The resulting speckled appearance is a superficial injury and will go away quickly. As the grass grows and extends vertically, the damages leaf tissue will be mowed off daily. Now that the course is open everyday the soluble fertilizers will be stored away and no longer used until next summer to avoid any potential mishaps during the winter golfing season.

 

Final Assualt in the 100 day war

This year's final course closure was a success, despite the rains that tried to hamper our progress.  The main focus of this closure was to wrap up some projects, start mulching beds, and do one last aerification on the greens.  I was even able to fit in a little something extra.

One of the major accomplishments during the closure was the rebuilding of a few forward tees that have annually been unable to maintain grass through the winter due to their small size.  During this past closure I had the contractor that built the course come in and double the size of the forward tees on holes 3, 9 and 13.  The contractor also did some work on the white tee on 9 to increase the size, as well as level the tee.  Below are some pictures of the work performed.

3 red tee being strippped

3 red tee expanded to the new size 

 

 

All of the new tees were laser leveled and then sodded with Celebration and should open for play in another week or two.  With the great growing weather we are having now it shouldn't take long.

 

 

A huge project that was accomplished was edging the cart paths.  This relatively simple process is exponentially complicated due to the aggregate material the cart paths are made from.  When I was at Collier's Reserve I would send two people to edge the cart paths weekly and they would do it in about 4 hours. One guy would run the edger against the hard edge of the concrete paths and the other would walk behind and blow off the trimmings.  As the grass grows out into the paths here at CCN, it roots into the material.  This requires the separation of the grass from the cart path material by hand, thus making the cleanup a much more difficult process.   When we edge cart paths, it takes 4-5 guys all day for a week and we typically have approximately 20 yards of waste to dispose of. 

 

 

separation of materials by hand                                       trimmings to be removed piled up

Another project that was started and is being complete this week is the replacement of all the small areas of grass that were damaged throughout the summer, either mechanically, chemically, or buy insects.  This is a normal process for this time of year as aggressive as I am with the summer maintenance.  Also, it more cost and time effective to just replace the sod as opposed to nursing it along with fertilizer and waiting.

#6 tee 

 

 



Cart path edge replacement #5

 

 

Drainage ditch area next to 12 green that stayed under water for weeks getting new grass.  This area was designed to flood when the course gets excess rain.

 

We are very fortunate to have great neighbors that we share a fence line with.  As part of our yearly landscape maintenance program, all of the plant materials along the western property line were trimmed to the top of the fence during the closure.

 

On the greens this time around I changed the aerification process a little bit.  Instead of concentrating on organic material management, I focused on increasing the deep water drainage of the greens due all of the rains we have been receiving.  Below is a picture of a set of normal tines I use to aerify the greens (the silver ones).  They penetrate the soil profile about 3.5 inches (you can see the shiny part on the inside, that's about the depth).  At the bottom of the tine block is an even longer tine.  This tine goes in almost twice as deep as the others to fracture the soil way below the normal depth to promote good drainage. When using deep tines the concern isn't about affected surface area, it's about deep soil fracturing to promote good drainage and deep rooting.  Our normal hole spacing with the regular tines is 1.5" x 1.5"  , but with the deep tines the holes are 3" x 3" apart.  You don't want to try and get the holes much closer than that because the tines going that deep, as well as moving slightly horizontal across the turf at the same time as the tractor rolls across the green, will want to start ripping the grass off the ground.  That's a bit of an issue! 

One thing that I was not able to start during this course closure was the mulching of the tree beds.  The reason is that all of the palm tree trimmings and horticultural waste the Club generates is shredded into recycled mulch which is used around the course.  In order to shred the materials effectively they need to be dry and they were anything but dry.  All the afternoon rains have soaked the materials to be shredded and is causing the shredder to plug up.  The process will happen, it is just going to be delayed a bit.

On a final note, we recently had the USGA out to do our annual Fall site assessment and I'm pleased to report that everything went very well.  There are no major issues and in fact, the initial report on us as compared to all of the courses that the USGA has seen lately is our course has fared better than most through a tough summer.  When the final report comes back I will post it online for everyone to see.

There are a few things that are still need to be done to make final preparations for the winter golfing season.  All of the bunkers have to be gone through to remove any contaminates, as well as check and adjust sand depths.  The course accessories like rake handles, ball washers and yardage tags will be gone through and repaired or replaced.  There still are a few trees on the course needing to limbed up and a few landscape areas that still have to get their fall haircut.  Overall though, the course is in very good shape and is primed to have a great winter golfing season.  The summer maintenance practices were very successful to promote a health stand of turf we can all appreciate and enjoy.

12 tee update

The neighborhood to the north of the Club, North Gate, owns the land to the east (left) of hole 12. This summer they did some exotic removal as part of their requirements for property management. The picture below shows the completed work. North Gate's permit required them to remove everything within 30 feet of the perimeter and allowe them to kill and leave in place the remaining. As you can see, it looks a bit different. The good news is their work has significantly helped the teeing grounds on hole 12 that have been plagued by shade issues. We definitely don't have shade issues anymore.