Closure #2 - feeling dead but rising

This past week has been one of the hardest aerification weeks I have experienced in nearly 20 years of golf course maintenance. The relentless rain, tremendous work load and my uncompromising expectations for the week kept the pace at a breakneck speed. The good news is although we are not ahead like usual, we are not slipping too far behind.

A lot of this past week's focus was vertical mowing the fairways, tees and green's followed by aerifying. This is a massive endeavor, let alone to do it in 5 or 6 days. "What about the 7th day?" you might be thinking. The 7th day is needed to put the golf course back together just so it's playable. We have to blow out all the bunkers and repair the edges, put back all of the yardage markers that were removed for aerifications, reset all the pins, tees, trash cans, and all sorts of stuff that gets removed in preparation for aerification week. So out of this week's closure I really only have 6 days, and those 6 days were filled with a lot of set backs.

Due to the Celebration grass's aggressive growth habit, it generates a lot of thatch and grain.  To manage all of this it is imperative to heavily vertical mow the turf.  This is what heavy vertical mowing looks like. My rule of thumb is if the material isn't flying at least as high as the canopy of the tractor then we are not going deep enough. 

Here is a video of how aggressive the fairway vertical mowing is.  For those up north, you should show this to your Supt up there.  Be careful though, he might freak out! 

The resulting mess then had to be cleaned up. I rent 3 turf vacuums, plus use the one I have to clean it all up 

All of the vertical mowing produces a tremendous amount of thatch that needs to be hauled off.  In total approximately 450-500 cubic yards of dead thatch and material will be removed.  This is just a few hours worth of material from vacuuming the fairways post vertical mowing.

Then, after cleaning up the verti-cutting we aerify everything making another huge mess, have to vacuum up all of that as well, then we come in and circle cut down the remaining grass to eliminate grain. It's a huge under taking, but it's worth it.

Circle cutting is not a real fun job. It's hot, dirty, it's a you go home with dust where it shouldn't be type job. 

This is why is called circle cutting 

this is not CCN, just a great pic to show circle cutting

Circle cutting is a very aggressive style of cutting because the cutting unit isn't riding flat across the surface, it's being forced into the canopy by the "turn" of the machine.  It is a great way to really attack the excessive grain of the grass during times of active growth. 

Nearly everyday though, it has rained.  Not your typical summer rain where you think to yourself "Oh, look honey it's raining."  It has rained like the end of days type rain, massive quantities in very violent fashion.  All of the heavy rains didn't do the course any favors.  Lots of washout in bunkers, lots of flooding, lots of washout on newly sodded areas.

soil wash out under new sod

Despite all of the adverse weather, the crew persevered daily and just repaired the previous day's damage and made daily progress.  Some of the great progress made was on the teeing ground renovations of holes 6 & 12.  The only thing we have left to do for these two huge projects is install the cart path material on hole 12.  All of the construction and grassing is done.

hole 6 from start to finish 

starting to fill in the low areas

adding more dirt to expand the tee north

this was all landscaping

rail road tie curbing installed on the new blue/white tee #6

grassed with sprigs

grassing complete

aerial view over 6 tee, the front and middle of the tee is almost 3 times as wide

Hole 12 start to finish

stripping the tee from the red to the back of the white

grassing complete on this huge tee

aerial view of 12 over the back tee

We also completed moving the cart path away from the green on 5

clearing out all of the trees in the way of the new cart path

new cart path area filled, cart path material installed and ready to grass

laying sod from the old cart path edge to the new cart path

project complete

 Last Thursday, during the course closure, the Club hosted another Celebration field day for turf managers across the state.  There were 30 guys that showed up from all across Naples and Ft. Myers, some from the east coast and even the two USGA agronomists in Florida attended.  It was a great day to share ideas and showcase our maintenance practices as a template for others to build their programs from.

One of the new practices the USGA wanted to showcase is what is called Fraze mowing.  This is a cultural practice that has come out of the sports field area that is being adapted to golf.  Essentially when you Fraze mow you are milling the surface off at a specific thickness.  Think of how roads are milled down before being repaved....same concept, only a smaller machine.

approx. 1.25" milled off

As you can see in the picture above, the road milling analogy is very accurate.  This pass is about 1.25 inches deep.  The purpose of going so deep on the range tee is to try to level it out somewhat.  Over the years of daily random sand applications to the divots the tee has become very, very bumpy (or wavy). Traditionally there is no way of correcting this without stripping the entire tee, laser grading, and then regrassing.  Now with the invention of these new machines it is possible to laser plan the tees regularly to prevent from having to do a traditional re-grass.  All of the stems left behind as seen in the picture will sprout new leaves and the turf will recover in a 3-4 weeks. 

Even though I had the top 1.25 inches of the tee removed, you can see from this aerial picture that there are still several low spots indicated by the green patches.  The milling process will fix the entire tee if you keep going deeper, but that will eliminate all of the needed grass rhizomes for recovery.  If the tee is truly pot holed like ours was, it will take several years to level it back out and still have some grass left to regrow from.

green spots mean the area was more than 1.25" below the rest of the area.

Some of the green spots were really low, as in the case of this sprinkler head.  This head was leveled to the teeing ground two years ago, but is now still 4-5 inches low.  That's how much sand is added annually to the range tee.

Having the range tee Fraze mowed served two purposes: 1) to level the tee somewhat 2) to generate sprigs for the new par 3 tees being renovated.  The Fraze mowing machine generates spectacular sprigs as it pulverizes the thick grass on the tee into perfect sprigs, and then shoots it out the conveyor belt.  Check out this video of what happens to the turf as it is Fraze mowed.  It is literally a sod to sprigs conversion.

I will take weekly aerial pictures of the range tee to show how fast the grass recovers.  Think of the turf loss like one enormous divot!

During this past week's closure the staff successfully finished recapturing the putting surface perimeters on the back nine.  After only one month the new perimeters on the front were nearly grown in, so there's no reason to not expect a rapid establishment and grow-in for the back nine as well.

#11 perimeter freshly replanted with aerification cores

#2 putting surface perimeter after only 30 days being planted

Another great thing that happened this past week I'm sure all the people who use the pool will love is the conversion of the pool from a traditional chlorine pool to a salt water pool.  No longer will liquid chlorine be used to keep the pool clean.  These new units will spilt the ionized salt molecule back into their separate atoms of sodium and chlorine.  The chlorine atom keeps the pool sanitized and then the two ions will eventually bond back together to form salt.  This type of system is not hard on swimmer's clothes, hair, or eyes.  Salt is silky they say!  Due to the size of the pool and production capacity of the units, two units had to be installed to keep up with the sanitation demands of that much water.

As many of you know I am good friends with the Superintendent at Royal Poinciana.  He and I were talking last week and he told me that RP is getting ready to start landscaping the median island from Goodlette up to the entrance of RP.  I'm happy to say that today they started to install the underground infrastructure in the median.  It won't be long before the entire median will be landscaped from Goodlette Road to Burning Tree Drive.

Don't forget to check out the clubhouse renovation blog at Clubhouse renovation . There's lots going on everywhere around here!  

Green's update

It's been a couple weeks since the perimeters of the putting surfaces were redone and I'm happy to say the new grass is coming in nicely. 

It's been raining like crazy here so that's been helping a lot with the grass growth. 

The course is in great shape considering what I did to it last month. It's amazing how fast the Celebration recovers. 

Tee expansion project work continues on 6 & 12. This morning we are removing all the rocks and steps on 12 to prepare for hauling in more dirt to widen the tee. 

The tee will be widened to the West all the way to the edge of the cart path and cut to be all the same level. This will give tremendous variability for spreading divot wear. 

5 green / 6 tee.... fill dirt is being hauled in for the raised cart path by 5 green. 

We are doing two things by raising the cart path by 5 green. First, the intention is to make it harder for a rolling ball to go left across the path and into the landscaping. Secondly, we are sculpting the ground to channel surface water to the existing drain basin so we do not have to modify it as well. There are a lot of things to consider for even a small project like this one. 

Also be sure to check out the clubhouse renovation blog as well. The clubhouse is looking good and moving along nicely. The goal is to try and have the roof sheeted and dried in by the end of week. That would be a huge milestone. 

Summer projects

Lots to do this summer with some aggressive projects planned. 

Here the staff is ripping out what's left of the 50 years worth of asphalt by 5 tees. This area of asphalt was not removed in the renovation of 2009 to save money and has always not blended in the way it should. It will have a new aggregate cart path installed and shaped to perfectly fit the area. 

Once the material is loaded it is then brought to 6 white tee area to be used as a base filler for the tee expansion project. The tee is being expended northward to the Mooring's Park fence line, but in order to do that the littoral needs to be filled in. To save money, the littoral is being 80% filled with the old as asphalt and then capped with clean dirt. This process allows us to environmentally get rid of the asphalt by burying above the water table. 

Once there's enough material piled up, Trevor pushes the material into the depression with the blade on the mini excavator. 

Along with the tee project on 6, the maintenance staff is moving the cart path on 5 green away from the bottom of the green's slope. This is being done to help any shots that might go left of the green from rolling across the cart path into the landscaping, having a chance to stop on the grass for a decent recovery shot. 

In the next picture instead of the cart path veering off to the right and riding the bottom edge of the green's slope, it will be to the left along the edge of the tree line and turn at the back of #6 blue tee. 

This is a very poor picture of the newly reclaimed putting surface areas, but believe it or not there's lots of greenery popping up. The program of using the old Aerification plugs seems to be working well. Trevor and Kenny are nurturing the baby plants along with kid gloves.  

Here Trevor is removing some palm trees in anticipation of BIG, LONG trucks making their way out to the comfort station on 6 for it's reconstruction process. I am removing the trees so that the heavy trucks do not have to make a 27 point turn on the paver brick cart parking area in front of the golf trailer which will destroy it. The trees will be saved and put into a nursery area for holding. Once the comfort station reconstruction is completed the trees will be replanted in the same place.

 

100 Day War Begins

It's aerification week and we all know that means... there's gonna be a lot of holes, a lot of ripping, a lot of tearing and long days. This time around however, it started out very wet. The weather as it was didn't seem to affect us to greatly in the beginning of the week, but in the end it really put us back about two days. 

As always we began with a whole lot of vertical mowing trying to eliminate the thatch build up and the grain accumulation from the previous growing season, followed by aerification and sanding. This time around however was also the beginning of our putting surface reclamation project. 

As everybody knows the putting surfaces that had been encroached by the celebration Bermuda grass was killed in an effort to prepare for this process. This week my staff was able to successfully reclaim the edges of the putting surfaces on holes one through nine. The weather delayed us such that we were not able to get to the back nine. We will complete the back nine reclamation process in July when we close down to aerify again.

The dead encroachment area being cut for removal. 

Trench view of the area being reclaimed. Only the dead grass and underlying thatch was removed. 

Then the greens were aerified to produce the needed new grass plugs for the trenches. 

The millions of small cores were pushed into the perimeter trenches to "plant" the new grass. 

Before being planted in their new homes, the plugs were spread and leveled out

Once the plugs were leveled they were compacted and watered. Let the grow-in begin. 

The perimeter areas were purposefully left a little low so the mowers would not scalp off the freshly planted areas. 

The plan will be to continually add supplemental sand to the perimeters of the putting surfaces, thus raising the level up to a point where it is all on the same plain. 

Holes 10-18 will have the putting surfaces reclamation process start in July when we close. Due to the weather delay, I decided to do a phased approach for this project. I didn't want to take a chance and try and complete the holes 1-18 and be unsuccessful before having to reopen for play. 

Random pics from this week...

Mowing in a cloud of dust scalping down the fairways. Scalping helps remove grain, or the tendency of the grass to grow in a particular direction. All of the grain causes the swirly look. 

The aftermath, not much greenery left around the tees and approaches. 

The mound of material removed from aerifying the greens, minus all the material that was reused. 

1/6 of the pile left from verti-cutting the fairways. At remedies amount of thatch is removed from verti-cutting. This helps with grain and sponginess. 

Lunch for the guys one day I made. Each one is 5 lbs of pork sausage rolled with rub, onions, peppers and lots of cheese. Then wrapped in 1.5 lbs of bacon, topped with BBQ sauce and slow smoked for 4-5 hrs. It's called a Bacon Bomb! I made 4 of these and they didn't last long.  I always cook for the guys when we are closed for the week for aerification. 

Long week but we're almost there. Lots to do and a short time to make it all happen. 

Leveling the playing field

Over the years as the greens are top dressed, it is inevitable that the collars begin to get what is called the "sand dam."  This is caused from the process of dragging in the sand after a sand top dressing of the putting surface. The collars have a longer leaf blade than the putting surface and therefore grab and hold more sand as the brush that is used to drag the sand is turned on the collars. Notice in this picture how the ends of the level are not touching the turf, this "bump" in the middle of the level is called the sand dam. 

Since we are redoing the perimeter of the collars I thought it would be a good time to go in and rectify the problem of the sand damn. The traditional method of eliminating the sand dam is sod cutting off the turf, leveling the sub grade by hand, and then putting back the turf. This is a very labor-intensive and long, arduous process. 

In recent years a new method has been devised in order to be able to eliminate the sand dam in one easy process without having to remove the turf to get to the subgrade. Essentially what is done is use a machine that has a very wide swath that cuts on a level plane perpendicular to the bump in order to flatten out any bumps along the way. The machine has hundreds of super fast rotating flat knives that act like little scoops, only remove what is sticking up too high. 

The end result is what looks like a divot, just five feet wide. You can see in the picture the green grass that is left within the machine's swath. These areas are areas that are little bit low and therefore did not have anything removed.   The picture is of a test pass that was done on the putting green by 1 tee. The white lines are the edge of the putting surface we are going to reclaim. 

So we all know that next week is aerification week, or the start of the 100 Day War as I like to call it, and that means the Club is closed. It would seem this time however, Mother Nature isn't going to play nice with us. On Monday and Tuesday of next week it is supposed to rain due to a tropical disturbance that is going to be moving up from the Mexican peninsula.  The weather disturbance is forecasted to intensify quickly and possibly become a tropical storm by Tuesday. 

Well what does all this have to do with leveling out the sand dams around the edges of the greens you ask? Simple....I have borrowed the machine that does the leveling process and need to get it back to the Club that loaned it to me. So, because of all of the weather that is forecasted we are going to go ahead and level the collars over the weekend instead of on Monday morning. The leveling machine is scheduled to go back on Tuesday and returning it can't be delayed. 

For those playing this weekend you will notice that some of the colors appear to be scalped out a little bit more beyond the edges of the dead green's  perimeters. It will have no effect on play and will be only a visual disturbance. Moving up the sand dam removal process a few days is a necessary evil to ensure that we maintain our schedule for achieving all of our economic goals for the summer.

Final Project Prep

Happy Memorial Day! My staff is in this morning to do the final herbicide application on the collars in preparation  for next week's putting surface reclamation project. Even though we have already sprayed the celebration grass twice to kill it and it looks pretty darn dead, there is still some green plant parts down in there if you look close. Hence the early morning holiday application of herbicide. The goal is to kill as much grass as we can before cutting it out. 

As a boy my father would always tell me that the better a job is prepared for, the better it turns out in the end. I hated it as a kid, but I can completely appreciate it now. 

Collar update....post Roundup application

Now that we are 7 day post application of the non-selective herbicide (meaning it kills everything) to the collars you can really see how much of the putting surface that has been lost. What is also very evident is how resilient the grass is in its ability to survive such an application. The Celebration grass's durability and tenacity is why it was chosen during the renovation in 2009. We knew back then that when we had to reclaim the putting surfaces, the very reasons why we wanted the grass in the fairways was going to make it a bear around the greens. 

All of the green haze within the kill zone is still actively growing Celebration grass, and this is exactly why we needed to get started killing the grass early. It is going to take multiple applications of herbicide to kill the plant significantly enough to make a putting surface reclamation project successful. If I do not kill the Celebration it will pop right back up on the putting surface from below where I cut it out and the whole endevour will be wasted. 

I'm guessing on the first application we got approximately 75% kill. So on May 16th, the first day the course is closed on Mondays, I will have the collars sprayed again. Then sprayed again on the 30th. Although we will never kill the grass 100% because we are not fumigating the perimeters, we will be able to achieve a kill rate in the upper 90% range. That will make anything that pops back up very manageable to remove.