Summer's Almost Over and Fall's Coming and A Major Project Change

 Well, we've survived the meteorological summer(June-August) with a little less than 3 weeks before fall. Overall had a pretty good summer. I would have liked the greens to be a bit firmer but humid(wet) and hot conditions do not make it easy to produce that type of playing surfaces. No doubt they will get firmer and roll out will be great here in September/October.

Weather highlights for July/August

4th wettest July on record 9.07"

22 Days over 90 in July, normal is 12.

16th wettest summer(June-August) of all-time 16.49"

26th warmest summer on record.

So what have we been doing on the course the last month or so.

• Sliced, knife aerated the fairways

12 hubs, 16 blades on each hub for a total of 192 blades. Aerator is 6' wide. Blades go in about 2" deep and leave a cut about 3" long in the fairway. Normally in previous years the slits would turn a little brown due to less rainfall/drying on the edges but with our fairways being fairly moist when we did this work, they stayed green. 

• Deep solid tined the approaches and tees

There are 6 tine holders with 3, 1/2" tines and 2,  3/4" tines for a total of 30 holes every 3" as the aerator rolls along. We set the aerator to go about 4-5" in depth. This will assist in root growth and moisture penetration into the tees.

• Sprayed 2 applications of fairway, intermediate and zoysia green surround bermuda eradication chemical products. Fairways are not crispy, just slightly off color from the spray. The club spent $ 250,000 to put the zoysia down in 1995. We are trying to keep the bermuda grass out of the fairways. 

Other work completed included but not limited to the areas below.

• Needle tined greens at end of July

• Trimming fence lines trees, vines etc.

• Topdressing and brushing greens and tees with sand to improve ball roll out and smoothness

This was some of the major work accomplished over the last month or so. Of course there are many hours spent mowing, spraying and daily routine work that takes place as well.

The month of October we had scheduled a tee renovation project for #4/#12 tee complex. The Glen Echo Historical Foundation had raised money for this project through member donations and the Gala. 

There is a 3' drain pipe that takes the storm water from Glen Echo Park subdivision and sections of the course from #6 to the lake in front of 10 tee. One of our rough mowers ended up rest on top of one of the pipes near the edge of 8 fairway when a cave in occurred. The galvanized pipes running underground are completely compromised, rusted out in the bottom which is creating sink holes in various sections of the pipe. We have completed minor repairs over time but its finally time to repair this situation properly.

The project will be broken up into 4 sections. Three sections average about 100-130 feet and begin and end at large drain chambers where the pipes are encased in concrete. The longest run is from a drain we exposed in the left side of 8 fairway to the cart path in front of 7 tee. We intend to place some additional drainage in 8 fairway and to the right of 8 fairway which stays wet for a long period of time in the spring. We also intend to reshape the bottom of 8 to help direct water into the large basin. 

I'm evaluating a potential timeline and will discuss it in the future. We have not had a Green Committee meeting since this situation occurred so more details will be forthcoming. We intend to wait until at least mid November since we will have a great deal of work on the course to complete over the next couple of months and of course we want to give our members ample opportunity to play the course during the middle of fall.

Aeration and More Aeration

Spent a lot of time last week aerating playing surfaces at Glen Echo. Tees, approaches and finished up with the range tees this morning before the storms hit. Also used our rough aerator with slicing blades and did back 9 last week and almost got through number 5 when we had a weld break. Should finish that later this week when the repair is made. Videos below describing our work. Links attached for those who video does not come up on your screen.

https://youtu.be/cOabWGH0DiQ

Picking up cores on short range tee.

All hands hurrying before the storm hit on Long Range Tee.

https://youtu.be/tby1MegAbnU

Greens Core Aeration

Our core aeration program was completed last week.  The program involved using our Verti-drain aerator with a 1/2" hollow tine set to a depth of 6".  The USGA green construction recommendation includes 12" of sand, a gravel layer with drainage.  We have push up greens construction at Glen Echo which has been modified with sand topdressing over the years.  There are no drains in our greens except for #9 which is the only all sand green with drainage on our property.  

The sand that has been used in the topdressing program has accumulated a depth of 3-4" per green over the years that this practice has been utilized at Glen Echo.   The water that enters our green system can only evacuate out of the green profile by moving through the sand and soil layer.  When the soil layer under our greens becomes saturated, the water will drain along the sand/soil line from the highest point of the green to the lowest point and will move out of the green through the soil which is usually the front area of the green.  Water that has to move across the green profile is much slower to leave the green complex than water that will go straight down through the profile of the green.  Our deep coring program is placing  sand channels in our push up soil layer which will allow additional water to go through  the profile of the green.  Entry points can also be made into the soil using channels made with our needle tine venting of our greens each month during the rest of the golf season along with our 1/2" solid deep tined aeration in October.   The slower the water moves out of our greens systems,  the greater the impact on putting green quality.  The wet conditions can lead to the course not being opened or delaying return to the golf course, large ball marks and slower green speeds.  A wet green surface can also lead to the green not being mowed for the day because the surface is too soft and the mower could scalp the turf and create extensive damage.  Saturated root  systems can lead to root decline, disease and or death.  Water is a very good conductor for heat and cold.  In the summer, we are concerned with our root systems becoming too hot which is one of the reasons we attempt to keep our water use to a minimum.  

The picture below shows Russ pulling cores from the practice green with the verti-drain aerator.

The next picture is our core harvester which picks up the sand and dirt plugs.

This is the first season that we used the more modern 4 wheel drive Workman to pick up the cores.  Its has much greater bed capacity and creates less imprinting of the tires into the surface of the green which is softened from the aeration process.  Last season we had some severe rutting from this operation using an older 3 wheeled machine.

Once the cores were picked up, we used our topdressor to apply about 50 tons of sand over the 20 greens. 

We then used our leaf blower which is pulled by a cart to begin blowing sand into the holes of the green.    Also, we did some hand brooming of greens which had a heavier concentration of material.  Once a large amount of sand has been blown into the holes, we use our cart drag brush which filled more holes and smoothed the sand to a consistent covering around and over the crowns of our bentgrass/poa greens. 

Since the greens had their growth reduced from plant growth regulators, there was very little turf to mow so we rolled the greens to help smooth the surface.   The greens were fertilized and a micro-nutrient soil building product was broadcast by walking spreaders.

The view below is the practice green on 3/30 after completion of our work. 

The practice green a week later with some warms days and fertilization.

The heat of the past week has helped push the growth and color of our greens.  We've also been fertilizing and adding micro nutrients to the greens to improve the recovery of our turf and assist in spring root growth.

The poa annua has been coming out of its funk over the last seven days.  We've just applied our second seedhead reduction combination product.  We will also be applying some additional growth regulator product to reduce the poa's growth habit and help improve our ball roll over the next few weeks.

The USGA has a video on greens aeration.

Greens aeration rescheduled for Monday, March 29

Due to rain this weekend, our greens aeration will be rescheduled for Monday, March 29.

Thanks

Aerate bentgrass approaches

I'm sorry to be a bit behind in posting.

Last week we aerated our bentgrass approaches. We first used our verticuter units which attach to a tri-plex(3 wheeled) mower which we use on tee and greens. The purpose of the verticutting unit is to cut down into the upper canopy of the turf(thatch) and help remove some of the spongy material that builds up in this area. Thatch consists of living and dead root and leaf tissue. The bentgrass by its very nature would like to lay or bend over to the side so we have to encourage it to stand up straight. The verticutting lines were then filled with sand which is explained later in this post. We used our Verti-Drain deep tined aerator with a 1/2" coring tine and pulled cores. Russ is operating our largest tractor which must be used to handle this unit. 16 approach is not the easiest place for this type of work.

Skip is picking up the cores with a snow shovel.

Once the cores were picked up, the crew applied a heavy layer of sand to topdress the approaches. The sand was brushed in the holes with brooms. The brushing action also helped the turf stand straight up which allowed for a tight cut by our walking approach mower. As a topdressing, the sand also was worked into the grooves left by the verticutting unit and will help in smoothing the approaches.

Our overall goal for this work is to improve the health of the approaches so they may survive the wear and tear from equipment, play, and the stress of our summer weather. We also want to improve the firmness of the approaches so a ball will have a better opportunity to release toward the green and the hole instead of hitting softly and stopping.