Time to Catch Up

I apologize for little activity on the blog lately. Time to catch up.  Course has held up well this fall. A little bit of rain has been helpful for the seed that was drilled in during late September and early October.

Frost is predicted over the next couple of days. What does that mean? Course will remain closed until frost has lifted from playing areas. We of course are most concerned about greens so this means the practice green and practice facilities are closed until frost has lifted off of those surfaces. What can frost do? Watch the following video from the USGA, they explain it perfectly. The frost delays are normally shorter in length this time of year since the ground temperatures are still elevated. As temperatures cool, the delays increase in length. Factors that affect delays include cloud cover and wind speed as the sun comes up. Remember, the last thing we want is to delay golfers from getting out on the course but our goal is not do damage to the turf that could create issues going into winter or coming out of winter into spring.




Fall aeration is planned on Monday 10/30 with probably 12-14 greens getting completed we hope. We will get the others completed over the next couple of days trying to finish before early bird players catch up to us. We intend to do a deep solid tine aeration, about 8-9" deep. We will fill the holes with sand which will assist the holes in healing and will improve ball roll out.  Greens should be pretty good to go as the week goes by. In the video it illustrates coring, pulling a core out of the green about 2-3" deep. Our process will not involve pulling out a core but placing a deep 1/2" tine into the green about 8". These deep holes penetrate into our soil layer which is about 5" below the surface of the greens and assists with root growth and moisture penetration. I'll explain more next week after our process is completed.






Staff has been busy removing part of the ornamental planting along the east side of 9 lake over the last few weeks. With the addition of plantings around the clubhouse and pro shop, our horticulturist Becky has just too much for one person to manage. This bed was going to need a complete overhaul but I thought the best way to handle it was to put it back to turf grass. We had a difficult time making the steep sloped bank look good in the first place. I think next season along the turf to grow a bit along the steep side of the bank will look pretty good in place of an out of control planting bed.

Lake bank sodded and seeded along 9. Saved some money and decided to seed the top part. Area next to it is bermuda and will over run the seeded area next summer. Why waste money on something that won't be there for long.

This is our practice green collar that was sprayed with a product called Pylex used at a rate of 1/2 oz per acre. We've made another application since this photo and hopefully will remove some of this pesky grass out of our collars.

Picture above is a fairy ring on #10 fairway. We've had these from time to time on our fairways but not to the size and killing rings that we have been experiencing in the last year or so. We are looking at  a couple of different potential treatments next season. First is possibly changing to an organic fertilizer which reduces thatch and improves the microbial population that are antagonistic to the fairy ring organism. 2nd would be a fungicide application. I like improving soil health through the organic fertilizer option.

We've had a little bit of Large Patch on Zoysia break out a couple of weeks ago. Largest spots were up toward 13 green. We did some spot spraying with a fungicide to help knock it down. The worst time of the year is spring for this disease. The spot spraying this fall will help reduce some of the activity next spring but we will still spray some of our areas where the disease occurs on a yearly basis. The organic fertilizer option could help to alleviate this disease but it takes a couple of years to throw the soil microbe population to the good guy side. Organic does cost more but in the end does it really when you have to keep spraying fungicides on a regular basis?

MSD is doing some storm drainage work in the subdivision next to us in Glen Echo Park to reduce storm water getting into the sanitary sewer line that runs through our course along the lake system. The excessive loading of the sanitary sewer creates issues along Wilson Street in U-City which has been on the news many times in the past from flooding.  Part of the work will be some repairs and storm drainage being improved between the property line fence on 9 and the lake. This work will start in the beginning of winter and will be completed before the golf season next spring. Outside contractors through MSD will be completing the work. Some large storm water lines will be installed into our property and a open grass basin will lead water into another pipe that will go into our 9 lake. Our staff will be removing irrigation lines that will have to be dug up and replaced once the project is completed. The club has been reimbursed for work our staff will have to do for this project.