Early Winter Update

 

As one of our very best turf seasons comes to an end we are preparing the greens and tees for winter.

We have, as in the past, gone with an aggressive aeration and heavy topdressing program on our greens.  The reason we do this is two fold, first - winter protection and drainage, second - some springs are too wet for us to aerate due to our soils.

 

Our Aeration/Topdressing  process was as follows:

 

We first treated our Greens and Tees for Winter diseases with a fungicide application and then topdressed the greens very heavily with a local sand that contained particle sizes up to 2 MM.  This larger particle size is intended to help our greens drain a little better after many of these procedures.    The greens are then Verti-Drained (deep tine aeration) with 3/4"x 10" deep holes.   The sand is applied first, prior to aerating, because the weight of the topdressing equipment can close some of the aeration holes and allow less sand into the intended spaces. 

 

Verti-Draining after sand application

 

Our next step was to use back-pack blowers to incorporate the sand into the holes.  Amazing that in some cases we were able to get over 2 tons of sand into a green, depending on the size.

 

Staff members blow sand into aeration holes - very labor intensive, some greens took 3 hours for this process. 

 

 

Next, we solid tine aerated with 3/8" x 4" deep "quad-tines".   This helped to smooth the massive holes from the verti-drain, while making literally hundreds of thousands of holes to help incorporate more sand into the root-zone.

 

 

Pro-Core  solid tine aeration over Verti-Drain holes.

Long time employee, Lisandro, getting it done.





Prior to dragging and smoothing out the remaining sand, as seen below, we spiked and rolled the surfaces a minimum of 3 different directions.   Once the sand was dragged, filling in as many holes as possible, the cups were changed and the greens re-opened for a few more weeks until going to temps for the winter. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PRO SHOP OAK TREE

 

If you hadn't noticed, the huge Oak tree near the proshop has "passed".  We brought in our arborist to confirm that there was no chance for this tree to recover prior to beginning the removal process.  The dangerous wood has been removed and most of the huge limbs.  The remainder will come down after the wires that have long been attached to this tree are moved.

 

Our staff split many cords of this Oak for the benefit of the members to take, and although it will not burn for a while, most of it has been quickly "gobbled up".

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wishing all of you the Best Christmas / Holiday Season.

-JohnnyP   

 

AERATION ..... DAY 1

 

 

Here is an photo layout of what we did yesterday in about 13 hrs.

 

 

 

green after double direction vertical mowing.  verti-cutting thins out the turf and cuts the "runners" and blades of grass which have avoided the mowers.   

Verti-cutting greens, night before - following our Monday outing.  I came back to do as many as possible to get a head start on the process.

 

 

Ran out of daylight and got to witness this beautiful sunset on # 12 as I finished up for the evening.

following the verti-cutting was our greensmower, here Lisandro gets it done.  This cleans up the greens for the next process which is the aeration.

Pat ran our aerator on Tuesday.  He walked over 13 miles....backwards while aerating 12 greens. 

we used 3/8" tines that at 2.0" spacing

this is what the greens looked like behind Pat and the ProCore 648.



I promised the membership we would use tines the size of  a pencil to minimize damage and speed up recovery.  Here is a photo to prove the size of the hole.
 

While that was happening on the greens, two men were bringing in our fwy markers which were then painted by our mechanic when he had some time. 

Fairways begin....

at 7:20am the fairway aerating crew began.  they arrived the day before and were ready to go on schedule.

They had 5 machines working at most times and were able to cover ground quickly

The owner of the company was on sight throughout to keep things rolling.

 

Greens continue...

5 of our groundsmen then blew all the aerated cores into piles 

 

piles of cores, which were half thatch and half sand, were then removed from the greens

 

last green for the day was  #12



Next steps on the greens.....

any hotspots were watered, to avoid problems while dragging sand later.

sand topdressing was then applied at a very heavy rate to fill the holes and cover the putting surfaces

15 green topdressed

topdressing was then dragged into the holes and spread as evenly as possible,  below is a finished look at how the greens appear now.   the two holed plug is a foam insert that we place into the hole in the green to protect it from damage during the process. 

 finishing up the fairways for the day...

over a ton of ryegrass seed was the then broadcasted onto the fairways 

seed was then dragged into the holes while the aeration cores were broken up by dragging an old school tine harrow over them.  unfortunately, with no sun the whole day, the core were never properly dried for the process.

more dragging, and dragging and dragging.



the thatch was then blown into the roughs to hopefully be picked up tomorrow by the sweeper.

panorama view from 10 tee as a lot of work is happening all over.

blowing off 18 fairway.


So ends day one of the process, hope the weather continues to be on our side and praying that when we are done it rains like crazy for a few hours to clean it all up.

thanks for checking in....

see you soon, JohnnyP 



 

 



 

 

 

IHCC - July Update

 

We have been blessed with incredible weather this summer, especially so considering the hellacious 2013 summer and winter.   Our golf course, due to it's tremendous variety of soils and landscapes, reacts to what we are dealt in both good and bad ways.   This year we are benefitting from cooler temperatures and while quite dry, the lower temps have allowed our turf to stay strong.  

 

There is a tremendous amount of science involved with our day to day decisions, and despite what some think, we do not randomly maintain the golf course.    a quick example... we do mow our greens everyday, occasionally skipping a cut on a Monday if the club is closed and we do not have an outing.   We do not change the height of cut during the season.  We are currently mowing the greens at .120" - all the greens are mowed at the same height, everyday.   Last week we were accused of raising the heights or not mowing at all.   There were complaints of the greens being very slow for our 1 day Member Guest.  The tournament naturally came on a very nice day that was preceded by 3 days of rain where we received over 3.0" of rain on our push-up greens.  They were soft and quite slow despite being mowed and double rolled.  We were again accused of not mowing and not rolling.   Weather..... its all about the weather.      

 

 

 

Many of you may have noticed a difference in color on the chipping green.   We are one of 10 courses in the US selected to test a "poa annua" control product.  We agreed to treat one sprayer width pass of the chipping green with the product while the other two-thirds is treated as all the other greens.  The two photos below show the discoloration.

 

 

 

I tried to keep up with tradition and gather some of our flowers to make arrangements for the Ladies Tees on 1 & 10 during their Member Guest.  The flowers hold up well throughout the event, but do wilt by mid afternoon.   We also have made 1/2 pink flagsticks and have purchased pink cup liners that add a little something special to our women's and Babe Z events.



Our new theory on replacing divots instead of filling with sand, only works if the divots do get replaced.  Three keepers here on #10 were not replaced and dried.  Our staff is constantly our filling divots with sand and seed, but please try to help by replacing your divot(s). 

Met up with this LUNA MOTH on the right of 14 last week

We tried this product to help us keep our very shallow ponds cleaner.  Without question it has helped tremendously, the ponds are much clearer, have far less algae, and do not have the foul odor they usually have in the summer. 





Random shots taken around the course:

13

turf looking good on new green #15

Sun setting on # 12

New 16

New 15

15

sunset on 12 with irrigation running on tee

 sunset on12 again with irrigation on

Panorama photo of 13 - amazing what quality shots you can get with an iphone