Touching things up

Yesterday I had my staff resod the south end of the Clubhouse putting green. Instead of replacing the damaged grass with more putting surface I installed Celebration. The reason being is that there has never been very much room on that end to turn machines around, or an area to get on and off the green. That meant the edge of the putting surface was always getting extra wear and struggled. Then when my staff miss applied some fertilizer, coupled with the extra wear and abuse, the grass just gave up and died. Shrinking the green a little bit and installing Celebration should provide a solution to the continual problem. 

Why white divot sand

I had a great question on the course the other day about why we now have white divot sand. The answer is really simple...I had a bunch of white sand left over from the summer and we are just using it up. 

In the next few weeks my staff will be using what remaining white sand we have left to top dress the approaches and tees in an effort to get rid of all the remaining white divot sand. Once we are rid of the white stuff, I will order in the dark sand we are all used to. 

Range tee over-seeding

This wk my staff did the annual rye grass seeding of the range tee. In order to give the seed as best a chance as possible to establish, I have requested that golfers use the mats for the next two weeks. The rye grass germinates very quickly, but if we start beating it up before the root system has a chance to get established we will lose a lot of the rye grass prematurely. Once the grass is up and we have a chance to mow it a couple times it will be ready for play. 

Green, well it should be.

As I rode the course this morning I was troubled by the aesthetic condition, not playability, of the putting surfaces. Although the we haven't done anything different, we have done a few routine items poorly. The culmination of these item is the resulting aesthetic condition of the greens.

What did we do?

In October I instructed the Assistants to start fertilizing the green surrounds to increase turf vigor, which they did every two weeks. On the last application, some of the applicators were not as careful as they should of been and misapplied the material by throwing the fertilizer onto unintended areas causing some of the brown burnt look around the greens...namely the Clubhouse putting green and the little putting green. This training issue has been corrected. 

The next issue has to do with sand top dressing the greens. As you know on Monday we sanded the greens and brushed in the material and all is well. This morning I was noticing the perimeters of many greens have an increased thinning issue. After talking with the Assistants, this increased browning was determined to be caused by the brushing in of the sand. The reason is due to the brush running over some of the edges multiple times sorta grinding the sand into the leave blade excessively. The excessive grinding is like a rug burn. It's superficial, just ugly. This issue has also been corrected. We will now be using a tennis court hand pulled brush to sweep in the sand. 

The last issue that I have observed is the general thinning of the MiniVerde. Kensington has the same grass as we do so I called their Supt to see if they are having the same issue, and he said his greens are just growing out of it. We discussed what he did to alleviate the problems and his solutions fall in line with what I have instructed my staff to do. 

Now that we know what the issues are I have implemented several crucial changes: 1) putting green fertility will be extended out to include the collars and immediate approaches to eliminate any possible surface burn from unintended applications. 2) Sand top dressing will be brushed in by hand using a tennis court brush to eliminate the "grinding" in of the sand which is causing leaf desiccation. 3) I am having the USGA Agronomist stop by asap to look at the putting greens to confirm my theory about thinning on the putting surface or identify what it could possibly be. 

The road to recovery

Now that this changes are in place, here are the protocols implemented to get the greens back into acceptable condition. 1) raise the height of cut a little bit. The green are running over 11 feet daily so the increasing the height of cut will have almost no effect on speed. 2) eliminate the application of all growth regulators to the putting surfaces. We normally try to suppress leaf elongation with a weekly application of a growth regulator to promote ball roll. However, the extension of the leaf blade is exactly what we need right now so the brown tips of the grass can be mowed off. Once we are back to healthy green grass we will reintroduce the growth regulator application. 3) Increase the application of very light rates of nutrients to promote grass growth. Again, growth right now is key to eliminate the brown leaf tips. 4) We are going to make an application of a full strength, very broad spectrum, fungicide to ensure there is nothing adverse working on the plant to inhibit recovery 

The vast majority of our issue are caused by the sand brushing. The forecast is for sunny and warm days, when coupled with the things we are changing should yield much better putting surfaces quickly. 

Pics of the Day

Riding around the course this morning I just couldn't take it anymore, so I got the drone out and snapped a few aerials of how gorgeous the course looks. So here we go...

What your ball sees right before it hits 13 green and rolls up next to the pin

Looking north...18 on left & 14 on the right

Looking south, 18 on right & 14 on left

Looking north, 13 on right & 10 on left

Looking west over 13 green

10 on the left & 13 on the right

Looking down 18 frwy

Great things happening behind the scenes

Stopped by the kitchen today for lunch and as I do everyday, I asked the Chef what he was making. To my surprise he said "smokeless smoked brisket!"

After checking my ears to see if there was something in them because I thought I heard the words smokeless and smoked used consecutively, Todd told me about his newest creation....and I can't wait to try it. 

The recipe comes from a website Todd turned me onto that I absolutely love, it's called Team Chef Steps. They even have an app for mobile devices. Here is the link to the YouTube video if you want to see the nitty gritty, but let me tell you...get to know the term "Sous Vide" , which pronounced Sue-Vee. It's French for under vacuum and an amazing way to cook the juiciest, most tensor things you've ever had. 

Check out the video here

https://youtu.be/ZlwFxgOa9Ww

Here is Chef's smokeless briskets being cooked now. So awesome, can't wait to try some!!

Check out all of the cool stuff Todd is doing on his new Chef's blog at 

http://cheftoddskitchen.blogspot.com

Test results are back...

In much the same way your doctor tests your blood for fats, enzymes and other things that are indicators of your overall health, I have the soil on the golf course tested for indicators of plant health. The important indicators I am looking for are expressed in percent base saturation levels. These numbers essentially tell me what the plant is feeding on. The base saturation levels also tell me what adverse effects are going on as well. For example, excessive levels of calcium will induse potassium and magnesium defficiencies. 

The test results were as expected given the great condition the golf course is in. The only issue needed to be addressed was increasing the available calcium in the greens....so the staff made an application of calcium to the putting surfaces this afternoon. Just like taking a vitamin! I will recheck the greens in a month just to make sure the deficiency has been corrected.