Course Update and The Lady Open Pictures and Video

Between club championships, group events, outings, and some nice play days, a great deal has been happening on your grounds over the last couple of weeks.

Our last application of our Bermuda Eradication products took place on Wednesday on holes 1-12. Higher winds and play in the mid-morning time frame prevented me from spraying all 18 holes. They will be completed early next week. Along with our last application of spray, we will be raising the height on the fairway turf in the next couple of weeks as we prepare it for winter. I will be watching temperature forecasts and growth rate of the turf to determine when this will occur. The latest would be sometime around the first week of October.

The herbicide called Pylex we used on the rough is doing great work on some of the areas but will need to be applied again next week. We then intend to drill seed Turf-type Fescue into these areas to improve our cool season competition and give us better turf cover. We also need to make another application on our collars, approaches, and green/bunker surrounds. These late season applications will hopefully set up the Bermuda for some winter kill.

We have 5 cool season tees, 2,3,5,10 blue, 11 white and 14 left tee. We had a disaster in crabgrass management on a couple 5,11 and average at best on 2,3 and 10. We used our walking drill seeder and drilled rye grass into all the tees except 2/3 which have a mixture of bent grass and poa annua. The rye-grass should give us improved cover and has damaged the crabgrass. We will definitely be on top of getting these tees sprayed next season to eliminate this issue.

The 8th main tee has shown some improvement over the last few weeks. I deep-tine aerated it 4 times over the last month and we put about 300# of compost on it to improve it over all health. The aeration should help reduce its moisture level over the winter and improve its overall health. We might also close it down some this winter and move play up to the red tee just to reduce traffic. We do this on a number of our smaller tees to help reduce wear and tear when the turf is not growing.

Becky is in the process of replacing the verandah planters with Mums for this fall. It think the planters looked great this summer and added some contrast to this area and the clubhouse in total. We plan on putting some tulips in them for the spring to give some great color to the balcony as life begins to awaken from a long winter's nap.

We will also be evaluating the long range tee for wear and determining a closing date for it sometime in October. I continue to encourage those of you who like to practice to use the long line method of divot removal from the tee than completely clearing a 1 or 2' square area of turf. That spot will not grow back until at least next June if completely removed. We intend to finish placing the netting on the poles and shortening the poles to a  little under 30' before the end of October. Trying to close the range during the season and doing the work with all the other work was not realistic for our crew to manage.

Randy rolling the greens. What are the greens stimping is the question posed. Probably too fast for most of us.

As you may have noticed this past week, the best greens of the season should take place over the next 30 days as long as the rains don't get too heavy.We are looking at completing our deep aeration on the greens the week of October 19th or 26th depending upon weather conditions. This should give you at least 4 weeks of unencumbered joy on this lightning fast greens.(Yes my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek) Cooler temperatures, lower humidity, longer nights all contribute to great ball roll out and many challenges on our greens. We hope many of you take advantage of the next month. The battle of the leaves is usual at a smaller level until the end of October or early November anyway.

https://youtu.be/HIJsFu7QLio



We appreciate your support and look forward to seeing you out on the course. Lady had a great time at her pool party as did all the dogs that I could see. I'm sure there were some tired pups that night. She only had to growl down one youngster who was just showing her some love but was a little to rambunctious for her taste. After a tough day, the enthusiasm that our pets show to us can give us pause and comfort from the difficulties we sometimes experience during our work time.

https://youtu.be/eSHgYzRBQ08

#2 tee compost project

As you know, we used about a ton of compost on a few tees on the course. I have noticed disease activity and the lack thereof on the 2nd tee which we split in two for a composting experiment this season.  For today's purpose of this blog, the sides of the tee I am talking about are looking back at Hole #1 with the metro tracks on the left side of the tee.  Normally I discuss things in direction the hole plays but my picture is laid out differently.  The overall health of the composted section is definitely improved from the check area on the right.  The right part of the tee has developed some Dollar Spot which is a fungus.  The composted section of the tee has no dollar spot.  Without any actual testing of the soil, I would expect the composted side to have improved beneficial microbes which hold down the population of dollar spot microbes.  Also, dollar spot is also attributed to a turf that is lacking nitrogen which can help to out grow the disease activity.  Click on the link above for additional information.
 
There is a large amount of Brown Patch which is a fungus as well on the check side.  The dollar spot and brown patch were severe enough on the check side of the tee that I had to spray it with fungicide today to get them back in check.  I am trying not to spray the compost side for brown patch but if it continues to worsen, I might have to break down and spray it.  With increases in humidity, you are seeing more of these two diseases active on the types of grass that are susceptible.  Fescue, bentgrass, poa annua, blue grass and even warm season grass such as bermuda and zoysia are showing some dollar spot activity.  High humidity levels increase the activity level of these two diseases.

#2 tee looking back toward #1.  The composted side is to the left.  Its overall appearance is better than the right.  It has more disease activity, has been requiring fungicide applications every few weeks.

This is a picture of brown patch which is below my phone holder.  These are areas that  have rings ranging in various sizes.  It has a washed out look and can cause thinning and overall weakness to the plant.  Fairly simple to treat with fungicide.  It can also be checked by changes in weather such as cooler and dryer weather.  There is also a cool season brown patch which can be seen in the winter, fall and spring.

To the left of the phone holder is dollar spot mycelium that are attacking some poa and bentgrass on the weak side of the 2nd tee.  It gets its name dollar spot from the fact that it is about the size of a silver dollar.  

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Compost trial on tees

Anyone who has played the last few days has seen a couple of tees with some black organic material laying on top.  We are doing a trial with some compost on the right half of the 2nd tee, the left 1/2 of the 8th tee and the front left section of the short range tee.  It worked it pretty well on the 2nd tee and driving range but will have to poke some holes in the 8th tee to get the rest of the material into the soil so the tee is playable.  We will be checking this product for overall turf health and improvement to the teeing surface.  I do not necessarily see this as a product that we will use on every tee but on areas to reduce potential applications of fungicide such as in #2 or overall soil health #8 which is very difficult to keep it soft enough without flooding it to get a peg into the ground. The range tee we are treating to see if we get quicker divot recovery.  There was some slight damage to the tee below from a little too much material but it should recover.  I will post in the next couple of days some updates pictures on the work.

We used our top dresser to spread about 900 #'s of compost in two rows on the right half of #2 tee.  We will manage the 1/2 near the cart path with regular fertilizer/fungicide treatments as needed and will manage the metro link side without any treatments except the compost.  It was then brushed into the canopy of the turf.

Leaf clean up along fences

As the leaves drop each fall, we spend  a great deal of time and energy either picking them up with our  sweeper or blowing them in windrows.  Our large area mowers then proceed to mulch them back to the soil.   Sometimes the prevailing winds and or our blowing machines move them up against the fence lines that mark the edge of our course creating places for errant or in my case perfectly lined up golf balls to come to rest.  We attempt to run our mulching mowers up against the fence but in the end, we must use backpack blowers to move the leaves away from the fence for removal.  The staff spent most of the day today cleaning up along a few different fences including #2 and #3 and possibly on to #4. The excess leaves also do kill grass up to 3-4' away from the fence which creates difficult lies if your ball ends up in this area.  Also, the leaves can blow back out into main play areas creating additional difficulty in locating golf balls.

Leaves being blown away from the fence and the sweeper then cleans them up.

The clean fence row along #2.

The making of leaf compost

With the large amount of leaves we have at the facility, it would only be logical for us to make something of value out of a couple of these piles of leaves. We had an opening in our storage bin area and decided to make some leaf compost for our ornamental beds.

The picture below is a pile of leaves that were dumped by our vacuum sweeper. In total, we placed about 3-4 piles of leaves in the bin.

The picture below shows the soil which is placed on the leaf material to help in breaking down the leaves to the final compost product. We also placed some of our flower bed material to add to the pile as well. Most composting is done without soil but I felt the soil would help to improve the nutrient holding capability of the compost once it is broken down.

Below is bag of fertilizer that we added to the compost to help heat up the material and break it down further. This is a greens grade style fertilizer that we would not normally use in this type of application but it was damaged in a flood that hit the facility during the summer.

Here is another view of the pile with sweet potato vine laying over the top of the leaves.

An interesting link to some frequently asked questions mowing of lawns, composting and mulch from Extension specialist Chris Starbuck from the University of Missouri.

http://extension.missouri.edu/publications/DisplayPub.aspx?P=G6958

We will pile up some leaves in our dump area which could utilized in the future as well.