Friday, June 26, 2015

Daily routine

It seems that regardless of where my travels around the course take me, I always make my way past the pollinator garden. I love watching the butterflies and bees enjoying what the Club has created for them. The mass colors of reds, yellows, oranges and whites are beautiful. 


The next time the course is closed I am having a company come in and trim all the landscaping grasses, as well as the pollinator garden. It will look pretty defoliated for a while until the plants send out new growth. The reason for the cut back it to not let the plants get very woody and entangled into each other. It is unrealistic to think we won't have some die off, but whatever doesnt make it will be replaced. When the winter season rolls back around the garden will be amazing once again. 






Tuesday, June 23, 2015

2 weeks post apocalypse



A quick course update. We are now 2 weeks post aerification and I'm taking things a bit slower than normal due to weather. We are receiving rain daily  in the 1/2-1+" neighborhood (it truly is the summer of 4-5 o'clock guaranteed rain). The oppressive heat index and the continual saturated soils are a great recipe for disaster if the putting surfaces are pushed too fast to recover. I know everyone wants fantastic playability, but right now caution is best to ensure long term success. To aid in recovery the greens were sanded and fertilized again yesterday, and will be weekly until the putting surfaces are back to full potential. The rest of the course is doing really well.  


The new putting green is growing in nicely. We began mowing it at 7 days and have it on a full on, fast paced grow-in. This includes bi-weekly fertilizations and mowings and weekly sandings. The added sand helps fill in the pot holes between the clumps of grass so the grass has a smooth surface to grow across. 

Other than that, things are pretty normal....Sun+rain+fertilizer=mow. We will soon trim the ficus hedges and start on other major projects once the new fiscal budget starts. Lots planned for this summer. 






Thursday, June 11, 2015

Every day is Sunday at the Chipping Green



Yesterday morning the crew planted the new grass, called Sunday, on the chipping green. Just in case you were thinking there is some sort of hi-tech way of planting grass springs, check out the next few pictures.


It's not very glorious, but it works. After the grass sprigs are spread by hand, my staff took shovels and home made sprig choppers and pushed the grass down into the soil a little bit, sort of creased the grass into the soil. It's the sprig to soil contact that stimulated the grass to set roots and become established. Once the sprigs were cut in we used a sand rake machine with its big floatation tires to roll over the green to seal the soil shut over the springs. If we were planting a lot of area on greens we would use a small disc cutter attachment on the back of a tractor to cut the sprigs in. Due to the very small size of the project, good ol fashioned hand planting will do. 

Now it's time for lots of irrigation and sunshine. Making will start in about 3 weeks. 





Tuesday, June 9, 2015

100 Day War, 1st Battle...Mission Accomplished

The first aerification week was a success. Even though the rain came almost daily, it patiently waited until the end of each day before dumping inches on us. I can't even imagine how many holes were punched into the course this past week. I'm guessing it would make the national debt look easily manageable though. The only areas that didn't get punched yet are the roughs, and they will be getting their holes on the Mondays we are closed.



The chipping green project is almost done. The fumigation tarps were pulled and the green was roto-tilled again to air out the soil for 24 hours, compacted the next day by driving a tractor over the surface and then floated out to see how the surface is prepped. 

Once the surface has been final prepped I inspected the putting surface to see where any adjustments need to be made and communicated them to Trevor for adjustment. I use and app on my phone that allows me to write and draw on pictures so there's no misunderstanding. 

Here is one of the team starting to make the adjustments. He is adding more sand so there are smooth transitions from collar to putting surface. 

Once the adjustments are made the new material will be blended into the soil profile with a roto-tiller. This will make sure there are no severe layers between the new and old sand. Once all the sand is added and tilled in, the putting surface will be floated out for inspection. This process will continue until the surface is perfect. Because we are not adjusting the surrounding collars, special care must be giving to make sure the new blends to the old seemlessly. 



The new Sunday Grass sprigs will be delivered tomorrow morning and will be immediately planted. Just a reminder for those who are here, water will be turned on for 8 min a head every hour from 9 until 6. That will be 32 minutes of water every hour. The reason for so much water is that the new sprigs have hardly any roots and it is vital that dehydration / desication is prevented. 









Wednesday, June 3, 2015

100 Day War, Bringing in the heavies

Now that all of the light work is done, it's time to roll out the heavy guns...the aerifiers. Aerification does many things besides just annoy golfers.  One of the main purposes of the process is to relieve soil compaction. The process of core removal shatters the soil structure. This is great for allowing air and water to move downward through the soil. The freshly porous soil also allows the roots to move downward as well.  


Part of the maintenance practices done of the putting surface is to remove all of the aerification cores. The reason is simple... the solution to pollution is dilution. What that means is the secondary benefit of aerification is organic material removal. After the greens are cleaned off, the now open holes that were filled with a heavy organic soil are back ofilled with straight sand. It's this clean, un-polluted channel in the soil profile that allows the downward movement of the water, air and nutrients. Even with all of the holes punched in the green, the realistic affected surface area is only around 13-15%. Due to the relatively low percentage of affected surface area coupled with the fact that we have a 12 month growing season is why we need to aerify so much. 

You an see the collection blade pulled by the aerifiers to collect the cores on the green as it goes along. This attachment has saved a lot of man power and money cleaning up the greens. We added some sand bags to help hold it down. 

Once the greens are cleaned off the remaining sand is brushed in and the greens are blown off very well to open up as many of the holes as possible. Once that is done copious amounts of clean sand is applied to the putting surface and incorporated back into the holes. 

The rest of the course does not get as much scrutiny as the putting surfaces. The aerification plugs on the rest of the course are not removed. They are left in place to dry, once dry the soil is separated from the grass / thatch. The soil falls back down and the thatch material is blown off and clean up. Once cleaned up the areas are sanded as well. We simply do not have the time, money or man power to remove all the old cores from the golf course...and nobody is putting on the fairways. 

Cores laying on top

Sand separated from cores

Thatch separated from cores being blown off fairways


Fortunately the weather has been coming in really late afternoon, actually helping somewhat if you can believe that. This week's closure is shaping up to very successful. I'm pretty sure we will accomplish all of our goals. 





Tuesday, June 2, 2015

100 Day War Commences

The 100 day war has started! Like any major offensive, we send out the stealthy, minimally invasive units first to soften the battle field. Instead of Navy Seals and clandestine demolition units, I sent in the vertical mowers to prepare the ground for the heavy aertillary known as aerifiers. 

Operation Dig and Rip was successfully completed on the greens yesterday. The guys vertical-cut the green 4 different directions to get after the built up thatch that has accumulated over the last yr. 
The debris after 4x vertical mowing on greens
A closer view of the cleaned up surface.

The greens verti-cutters went down 1/2 inch into the putting surface, we normally verti-cut at 1/8 inch. 

The rest of the course received a light vertical mowing as well, along with a height of cut reduction. During the winter golfing season the tees, approaches, collars and fairways are mowed at 5/8 inch. This is ok temporarily to give the surface some fluffier grass to hit from, but long term it would create severe thatch and grain. So much so that it would be tough to get your club through the divot. 
Height of cut reduction
Height reduced from 5/8" to almost 3/8". 

Notice all the grass still sticking up, those are really long stems. We will be mowing the grass repeatedly to try to cut off all of those really long stems. 

Part of this week's adventure was to complete the prep work for the chipping green practice area expansion project. All of the surface area changes outside of the putting surface was completed over the weekend. The putting surface changes were completed on Monday and the putting surface was fumigated late Monday afternoon to prepare for new grass.

The green was going to be regressed with the same turf as we have on the rest of the greens, but a last minute opportunity came up that changed everything. Last Friday I was talking with a sod producer about their involvement in a field day CCN is hosting July 15th and they mentioned a new putting surface grass called "Sunday Grass" they have and are looking for places to demo it. I mentioned to them that the chipping green is being re-grassed next week and they offered to give us the grass for free if we would put it in and be a trial site for them. I spoke to Tim regarding the possibility of using the new grass and he said to go for it. So the plan is to pull the tarps off of the putting surface on Monday and prep the green for planting on Wednesday with Sunday Grass. 

Needless to say it's a long week of hard work in the hot sun. One way I keep the boys motivated is to make sure they eat a good lunch. I told them if they did their part every day I would do mine and take care of them. Today's lunch included some slow smoked BBQ pork tenderloin. Ever watch one of the tv shows about the African Safari and seen a pack of hyenas on a carcass? Now add some manners and flatware, and that's a good visual for how ravenous my crew is when they come in for lunch. We are really fortunate to have such a great group of guys working so hard for us!!!

More holes to punch, more debris to clean up. Stay tuned, more to come.