Spread It, Vertical It, Trim It, Fill It and Please DON'T Step Through It

 What a rollercoaster its been over the last few weeks with our work here at Glen Echo. This week we're reaching the peak and heading down the biggest drop. All of our grounds responsibilities are coming together to start all at once but our staff along with some pretty good weather I must say are knocking it out of the park with a couple twisty loops in between.

SPREAD IT

The pandemic has created some shipping issues with parts in repairing some of our needed pieces of equipment. Our spreader is down and with the onset of warmer weather our zoysia is hungry and ready to move a bit so we borrowed a spreader from the best Super I know, my brother and spread a couple tons on our fairways over the past couple of days. Little more spreading to do as well with a little nitrogen to go into the roughs to push a little energy into them for the summer stress period. Oh what a challenge it will be playing from it over the next few weeks! Hit em straight.

https://youtu.be/pXnd4mWMpLg

VERTICAL IT

Did a little vertical mowing on our greens the last couple of days. Its normally completed a little earlier in the season but timing has not been where I wanted.  You say vertical, what do you mean? Well, allow me a moment to explain. Greens mowers have a piece of metal that stretches across the ground and stands the turf up and the blades then come through and cut it off. We are talking about a setting of about 1/8" maximum which is about 30 sheets of typing paper. Pretty thin. Below are pictures of a normal mowing reel and a vertical mowing reel.

Regular mower with a straight bar across the bottom that stands the blades up and anything above the top of the bar gets cut by the spinning blade.

The vertical mower cuts down into the surface of the green. 37 blades across 20" spaced at about 5/8" apart. Its purpose is to cut any bent grass in its line that have bent over and grown laterally which is its nature.

Our vertical mowing only goes about 3/8" deep helps to manage the bent grass in the manner that I anticipate. We went front to back on Tuesday and today we went the opposite direction and made what appears to be a checker board pattern across the greens to insure we could cut many of the longest blades. Tuesday we did a light sand topdressing behind the vertical mower than brushed and mowed. Today we only brushed behind the vertical cut and mowed. The disruption of the surface lasts a few days but I would anticipate by this weekend the greens should be at their normal roll out.

https://studio.youtube.com/video/eIUkyFNgzjw/edit

  The arrow on the left is pointing to the shorter lime green poa annua.We have reduced its competitiveness with a growth regulator called Paclobutrazol in an effort to encourage the bent grass to out grow it. The arrow on the right/middle is pointing to bent grass plants which if you look at the length of their overall leaves are 3 to 4 times longer than the poa and much wider blades as well. We don't vertical very often because it can reduce the competitive advantage bent grass has over poa but a cut like this can stimulate growth of the bent and force it to push out more leaves from the crown(growth center of the plant). Ultimately it improves ball roll out for future rounds of golf. Now you can go to a depth of an inch or more but that's usually done much earlier in the season to allow for proper healing. Scheduling had not allowed us to get this process completed in the last few weeks but the timing of the cool down over the next few days works perfectly for this cultural practice. 

 

TRIMMING IT

The staff have been hitting the property with trimmers attempting to get all trees, fence lines and other structures trimmed up over the last couple of weeks. They are weekly trimming and hover mowing our bunker banks which is usually a 6-7 hour job for 3-4 people. Once the heat of summer arrives, there is a bit less growth which saves some time. 

FILL IT

Our grounds detail work as we've mentioned in the past are our tennis courts and pool. Continued clean up including painting the asphalt  area and getting the shade structure painted and cleaned. Cleaning  stored away furniture and existing furniture that overwintered at the pool. Becky's been hard at work getting the urns filled and the giant hanging baskets placed at the pool. Touch up painting of the pergola and attaching the sunshade to its roof all in a days work for our staff. 

 We removed some hanging baskets from the Pro Shop front area and have added some new baskets to the Field Bar. Becky planted those last week with Caladium, Sun Patiens, Asprargus Fern and Coleus. Six in total. Should be a good look this season.

 

Please DON'T STEP ON IT

Speaking of Becky and the work she does comes the last but not least of our blog. We have a couple of ornamental plantings that are in some high traffic areas, especially around the pro shop. They were put in place over the years to give a great back drop to our closing hole and to give cart and walking traffic a defined area to walk and or drive around. Last weekend, I happened to be up around the pro shop and saw with my very own eyes people walking directly through the bed area. 

Our walk on and walk off area at the practice green was an embarrassment for me and we have made great strides in improving this area. We improved the soil structure and increased the irrigation to small directed heads for this walk off area. We also placed stakes and roping that can be moved to spread the wear and tear. Every foot print through the ornamental bed compacts the area and does not allow water to penetrate properly and damages plants. We appreciate you walking a few extra feet to protect the work our staff has spent many hours completing.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for your time and hopefully you get out and see  us over the next few days.

Fairway Aerating

Mother Nature has been in charge all season with wet conditions. With only a couple of dry days every so often combined with a heavy play schedule, we were finally able to get dry enough conditions to aerate our fairways today. A few pictures with a couple drone videos.
Our process included the following steps:

• Mowed Fairways to help reduce dew and the total amount of turf that would need to be mowed off after the process is completed
• Aerated the fairways pulling a solid core with a 1/2" tine about 3" deep
• Used our flail mower to help break up the cores after they dried for a few minutes. This mower has tags slightly larger than a dog tag that is attached to a rapidly spinning roller and literally flails apart the soil, thatch and grass plugs
• Used 2 metal drag mats to break up the remaining pieces of soil that built up
• Used our tractor blower and pull behind blower to remove grass turfts and excess soil
• Mowed the fairways again to clip off the turf pulled up and help break the soil that was still left on the fairway
• Sprayed the fairways with a soil penetrant and urea fertilizer to assist with the healing process and improve overall turf vigor

Aeration improve turf root structure, water penetration and drying of wetter areas, thatch reduction, gas exchange, and microbial activity which will improve over turf quality.

Jason pulling cores on 18, our last hole. Dodged a big bullet with the thunderstorm that hit around the I-64 area. Brought us in for about 45 minutes because of lightning.

 

Little drone view of Jason's work.

Tom using the flail mower with the before and after going over the area. Does a decent job.

 

Skip and Rollo dragging fairways to break up remaining cores and soil in preparation for the blowers to remove the remaining material into the rough.

 

Russ in a dust storm and he mows over the distrurbed turf on #1.

Sprayed fairways 1-5 and 7 with Urea and watered it in to improve turf vigor and color.
Will complete the other fairways as time allows over the next day or so. We included a soil penetrant in with the spray to assist water penetration over the next month as we begin to move into drier weather and the need for irrigation cycles.

 

Blues, Stimulation, and Getting Tight

What a whirlwind the last two months have been if you are a sports fan in our fair city. Great run for our St. Louis Blues as Pierre Laclede can attest outside city hall last weekend!!! #LGB

Speaking of stimulation which our Blues did plenty, we have finally been turning to the good side of weather over the last few weeks even though Friday and Saturday have been wash outs for the most part.

Glen Echo is a warm season golf course. Our largest area of fine mowed turf are our fairways and tees which account for almost 30 acres of warm season grass, mostly zoysia. The bermuda grass which I have a love/hate relationship with is required to help round out our course and fill in where we have voids in cool season fescue, poa annua and bent grass which invades our rough. The long cold winter has slowed its emergence in higher traffic areas but warmer temperatures are beginning to help it fill in where we need it.

There were enough gaps in the rain during Stanley Cup winning week so we could apply fertilizer on the fairways/approaches which will improve green up and also begin to help the turf fill in as needed. Most areas where we have needed to replace turf in fairways occurred from some of our bermuda eradication work last fall and some winter kill of both bermuda and a little zoysia. Also we experienced a few thin areas in north to east facing slopes 10 and 12 approach and also from excessive shaded conditions.We still have a few more places to do some sod patching on fairways, intermediate, and a few green approaches and surrounds. As temperatures increase which increases soil temperatures, this will also speed up growth of our warm season grasses. We did modest fertilizer application around the greens to improve fill in of the bermuda and give the cool season turf just a bit of energy to fight through the rest of the summer. We will do some additional spray-able and granular apps along weaker fairways and around all fairways in the first pass of the rough.  This will improve color and thicken the rough for the summer. Oh joy he's going make the rough rougher, yes, yes I am.

I think overall our rough is about in the best shape I can remember since arriving in August of 2008. Still fighting some weeds in various parts but are getting some good kill throughout the property. applications.


We had hoped to begin aerating fairways on Monday but it appears we will be too wet. We will try next Monday on our closed day which allows us to get a full day in. We will also do some individual fairways this upcoming week if we begin to dry down.The fairway aeration program should improve the turf in a number of ways:

1. Reduce thatch through increased microbial soil activity
2. Increase water penetration and drying down in wetter areas
3. Assist with disease management including fairy ring
4. Stimulate turf growth
5. Reduce compaction in our fairways soil
6. Breaking of the cores will help to fill in small imperfections in  surface areas.

Russ mowing 2 fairway.

From behind #2 green

The course continues to tighten and improve as we work our way into the first week of summer. Tree trimming, tree removal, sodding, aeration, and just general clean up of all areas are ongoing 

 I've included a Countdown Timer on the main page of the blog for the upcoming Invitational Member/Guest coming up in July. Amazing to think we are less than 30 days away from this great event.

Warm season fertilizer applications

Last weekend and finishing this morning, our fairway fertilizer was spread on our 25 acres of zoysia/bermuda.  We still need to walk apply fertilizer to the close approaches, warm season green surrounds and tees early this coming week.  We applied 5,900 pounds of material which gives us an effective rate of 3/4# of nitrogen per one thousand square feet.  This should be sufficient fertilizer for the season unless I make a 1/4" spray-able application in August of urea.

The warm nights and high rain fall early in the week have kicked in the warm season fairways.  This fertilizer should also give it a needed boost and help to fill in a majority of the voids.  We will continue to remove spots as needed but will be using our sod nursery near the lakes and hole 16  The staff laid 350 yards of zoysia this week which also meant they picked up 350 yards of soil/sod mix and hauled it away.  A tough job which required well over 100 hours of labor to complete.

Zoysia/Fairway Fertilization

Yesterday evening was a perfect time to begin our fairway fertilization.  The course was closed and the wind settled.  We are a couple of weeks late with this application due to the cooler than normal weather conditions and rain that we experienced.  As a part of this application, we must water in the product to keep some of the quick release ammoniacal nitrogen from burning the turf.  Usually a couple of turns of the heads is enough to get it activated and off of the leaf.  The heat of the last few days has increased the soil temperatures which is important for zoysia grass to begin its normal growth cycle. 

We will use about 5,000 pounds of fertilizer material on about 25 acres for our initial fertilization.  The rest of the summers application will be applied when we spray our Plant Growth Regulator(PGR) to keep the zoysia compact in its growth habit.  Less growth means less clippings which provide for a better overall appearance after mowing.  Without regulation, we would have to blow the clippings off of the fairways after each mowing that is completed in the early morning dew.  We will throw some soluble fertilizer in with our regulator to give the additional fertilization that the zoysia will need to be healthy and strong.

Water flying on #11 fairway to water in fertilizer. 

Fertilizing warm season turf

The staff spent the last couple of days fertilizing our warm season grasses.  We have two warm season species at Glen Echo.  Zoysia which is our preferred species and makes up a majority of our fairways, tee surfaces and in some cases is a part of some of our greens surrounds.  We also have Westwood bermuda
which is in the same areas but is not the dominant species.

The fairways were spread by our Toro Workman 4200 pulling a Lely spreader.

Our green surrounds and tees were spread with walking rotary spreader.

The fairway and green surround application was spread and then watered in.  We've only placed water on our fairways a couple of times this season so this gave us a good opportunity to check out our system for proper operation.  As usual, there are a couple of problems that appear when we do this testing work.  Our tee application was made yesterday and the rain overnight watered in the product.
Assistant Mike and Skip working on calibrating the spreader to the proper application rate.

We apply about 1/2 of our season application during the current application and the remaining product is sprayed on our fairways in combination with our plant growth regulator application made every 3 weeks during the summer. 

Fairway Fertilization

This past Thursday and Friday, assistant Mike applied an application of granular fertilizer to our fairways. Our fertilization program for fairways will include this application which will make up about 40% of our fertilization on our fairways. We plan to use urea which is a common source of N for the rest of our fairway fertilization sprayed with our growth regulator applications sometime around the first of July. We will melt the granular urea down with water and will add a plant growth regulator at the same time. We will make about 5 sprayable applications throughout the summer to keep our fairways growth in control and to provide a supplement food source which should give our fairways some consistent growth.

We will be adding a product called Hydrexx to our Urea 47-0-0 fertilizer application which will be mixed in our spray tank with our primo PGR(plant growth regulator). This product reduces the amount of ammonium which is volatilized into the air.(Volatilization is when a fertilizer changes from its stable form to a gas form(ammonium). During this process, 15-20 percent of the fertilizer will be lost to the atmosphere if the fertilizer has not been stabilized. The use of the Hydrexx can be used at a couple of different rates which control the volatilization from 7-14 days. This also allows the nitrogen to be released slowly from 6-8 weeks or 10-12 weeks based on the turf's needs. I've copied a link below which discusses nitrogen volatilization in more detail for those who are interested in reading further.

http://extension.missouri.edu/publications/DisplayPub.aspx?P=WQ257

I've also copied a link to the Agrotain website regarding the Hydrexx product. While you are there, you might check out products called UFLEXX and UMAXX which are stabilized nitrogen products. UFLEXX is the 6-8 week slow release product and UMAXX releases in 10-12 weeks. The UFLEXX product is being used regularly in the home lawn care industry and both products are being used in the golf industry and other turf grass applications..

http://www.agrotain.com/turf/pdf/0109_HYDREXX_09SellSheet.pdf

Below are pictures of Assistant Mike applying our first granular fairway application of fertilizer.
The Lely spreader carries about 8-10 50 pound bags and can throw a distance of 45 feet or so.
Our tees and close zoysia approach areas to greens will be given the same product but will be spread by walking rotary spreaders because they are able to spread at closer range and will reduce any inputs to green surfaces. The product is then usually watered in to get it into the soil profile and prevent burn to the turf grass.