Cart Paths and Fairways

Over the next few days, there are a couple of large scale projects taking place on the grounds of Glen Echo CC.

Sunday evening we began to aerate our fairways. Skip and I came in once the last tee times went off and started pulling cores and then busting up the cores with a Flail mower that has spinning blades and chains and pulverizes the plugs. Today we will begin to drag the fairways with metal drags which breaks up any plugs that made it past the grinding. It will also help work the soil back through the zoysia canopy. We blow the remaining thatch and residue into the rough where it can be chewed up by the rough mower. Earth to earth and dust to dust. The fairways are then mowed. We anticipate this taking more than one day to complete all of our fairways. We normally have 3-4 fairways to complete usually on Tuesday and or Wednesday depending upon the weather conditions and anticipated play. 

Asphalt work will begin in earnest on Tuesday with the front clubhouse circle getting an overlay, Grinding along the edges of the crosswalks in the Pearson Plaza and near the portico will be completed and then a layer of asphalt will be laid in the circle area.We will begin asphalt on the course on Wednesday. The first work will be from the bottom of 3 hill all the way into the first tee and also the path that goes to the range.

Large dump trucks will be taken by our staff out into the field to assist in navigating through play. We will stage them in the parking lot and they will be brought out from there. They will also be brought back in once empty. Once the first section is complete, they will proceed to the second section which will be from the lowest point on hole 3 going forward through 4 tee to where it ties into the path behind 7 green. Those trucks will be staged  in the main entrance area, The new overlay will be 2" thick and we have a total linear footage of about 5,700' at an average width of about 8'.  

We anticipate this work to be completed by Friday. The asphalt will be able to be driven upon the next day. Depending upon weather, we will begin the process of back filling dirt in along the path and sodding fescue to help make a smooth transition with the new grade. We will do sections at a time to give us the best chance at growing the turf in properly since we are still into summer heat. I would not anticipate all the sodding to be completed before winter is upon us in December. Some areas might not need any back fill which will be helpful.

 

 

The sealing and striping of the parking lot is scheduled for Monday August 9th. Once the delays in the parking lot moved closer to our open window for the cart path overlay, the two projects were switched around so the sealing would not be damaged by the large asphalt trucks. This work should take 2-3 days next week.

We appreciate  your understanding during this time.Check you emails for updates and or social media for both the club and my personal accounts.

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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.

Fairway Bermuda Eradication Version 2017

The Zoysia fairways are greening up early this season. Our fairways at Glen Echo have a tendency to be a bit behind because of our Bermuda Eradication work we are doing with late Summer early Fall herbicide applications. I think most will agree we will take being a little bit behind in trade for the great shape they have been in mid-summer until the end of the season the last few years. First video of the year about our Eradication program describing the area  on the north side of the main road of #8.

https://youtu.be/HXMKs0855eA

Article on Course Maintenance and Course Accessibility

Excellent article from the USGA regarding maintenance practices and golfer accessibility to the course and the ways this can be balanced for the benefit of everyone.

http://www.usga.org/course-care/forethegolfer/they-need-time-to-get-it-done.html

Spring Aerations, Here They Come

This season we will be doing the DryJect Aeration process from our contractor. Scheduled initially for this Sunday PM and next Sunday PM, the dates were moved due to weather concerns.

We will be completing this process on Wednesday March 15 and Thursday March 16. I don't like to do this work during the work but we had no choice or wait until the end of April which I do not want. It is a pretty non-evasive process but we will have to have you go around the holes that we are working. We will have 2 units working. Takes about 45 minutes per green or so.

Below is the link to last years work. We usually just brush the greens and roll them if they are dry enough and they are ready for play.

http://geccgcm.blogspot.com/search/label/DryJect

Later in the month we will be performing our deep-tined areation which will help us drain water deeper through our profile as needed, especially through the earthen layer that rest 6" below ground.

I will make another post in the next few days catching you up on other work the staff have been performing.

Greens Aeration Final and Other Work

Completed our last 3 greens this morning. Process included mowing, verticutting, pulling cores, picking up almost 2 million cores, applying soil amendment, topdressing, blowing sand in holes, brushing, rolled this morning and fertilized.  Video explains most of our work. Being a working member in the aeration process, the video leaves much room for improvement including camera(need to buy a Go-Pro) and maybe a Phantom 3 or 4 drone with some overhead video which will help us in our operation. I placed a link to YouTube for those of you whose devices do not open the embedded videos.

Also, we aerated the cool season tees, holes 2,3,5,10,11,14,17 and filled some of the stump grinding holes with soil in preperation for sodding. Short video and a couple pics below as well.

https://youtu.be/483zo9IEMLQ





https://youtu.be/HpJTLXsnDGg





https://youtu.be/5YodaG3OqE8

Compacted below, pile of soil for me to spread under the watchful eyes of you know who in the background!

Smoothed and ready. Might need to add just a bit more dirt but we will see.

Preview Video, Spring Aeration 2016

The first of our two spring aerations will begin tomorrow, March 21st with a 1/2" core aeration. We expect to have all greens completed by Tuesday if everything goes to plan.

We intend to do a second aeration next Monday using a newer technique called Dryject which is gaining popularity around the country.

Made a short video for your viewing pleasure of our practice run on the practice green from Friday to make sure our depth was set properly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WCeAyLAsa8

Post 15 Days Since Greens Aeration

Its been 15 days since our greens aeration was completed and they are almost 100% healed. A few holes here and there still trying to close but overall in good shape. Did our first wet morning mowing today and rolling behind the mower. We have had to layoff early morning work on the greens to allow the sand to settle down a bit so we did not create a mess on the greens. Dry mowing and rolling was the order of the day last week.

We laid off the growth regulator at aeration time which allowed the turf to bounce back along with great growing weather helped in the healing process. I applied a regulator and some fertilizer last Friday before the weekend rain to reduce the growth of the poa annua and improve the growth of the bent grass. This should improve ball roll over the next couple of weeks before we allow them to get a little hairy before winter sets in. We have at least one more regulator planned before winter if weather allows help stunt the poa.

Venting/Hydrojecting Greens Today

In an effort to keep our greens in the best shape possible health wise during the summer, we vent our greens every few weeks.  Mr Webster describes to vent is to provide an outlet for air, gas and liquid Exactly the three things we are trying to accomplish when we vent our greens.

The first venting occurred around  June 1st with a needle tining using our large tractor and verti-drain machine. The next two applications including today's are made by E&E Enterprises, a contracted service who provide three hydroject machines to our site. A row of 3000 psi streams of water are shot into our greens creating a near pencil sized hole that goes about 4-5" deep into the sand profile.

The greens were top dressed with sand before the venting, we then rolled them and brushed them after the hydrojecting was completed.

Below is an explanation of how air, gas and liquid are effected by this venting action taking place in our green profile.

• The vent hole allows oxygen to enter the green sand profile improving the health of our roots and encouraging microbial activity.
• CO2 gas/carbon dioxide can build up in the soil and the venting holes allow this trapped gas to exit.
• The holes allow excess water to move through the profile quicker and at the same time if we were dry would allow moisture to enter the complete profile much easier. The vents also will help dry out our saturated sand profiles.
• The vents also help in reducing the temperature of our sand profiles, especially when they are holding water. Moisture is a great conductor of heat and will artificially warm up the soil much quicker when it is saturated than if the soils are at average moisture levels. As the soil profile increases in temperatures over 80-85 degrees, root hairs begin to die which are the structures where most water and nutrients enter into the plant. The less root hairs functioning, the more stress a plant will experience. 

https://youtu.be/4HI5G5eKqcc

Greens aeration completed

The staff worked about 90 labor hours aerating the greens.  Weused our Verti-drain deep-tined aerator with 1/2" solid tines going 9-10" deep with 5% kick.

We used about 30 tons of sand on the greens.

Our process included the following.

Sprayed greens over the last week with fertilizer, root stimulant and water penetrant product.  This will encourage healing and reduce dew on greens which dries greens quicker for after aeration mowing/rolling.

The greens were mowed and then a granular soil conditioning product was applied. 1000# of Renovate Plus.  Topdressing  sand was applied heavily to the green. This required almost 2 full loads per green depending upon the size.  Our light topdressing during the season usually requires one load of sand per 4-5 greens.  The sand layer helps to reduce tracking from the aerator.

Greens were then solid tine aerated.  The 5% kick occurs when each tine holder is at the bottom of its thrust into the green. This motion will fracture the soil layer that is 4-5" below the surface of the green which improves rooting, oxygen exchange and water penetration.  The soil layer is the original surface of the green when they were constructed many eons ago.

We then used blowers both backpack and our tow behind blower to help move the sand into the channels. Our brush drag was used as well and it also provided a final smoothed surface.

The greens were rolled and holes were changed.

To get the guys home last night, we stopped before finishing blowing in the sand on18. It will be completed this morning.

This process will enhance our greens in the following ways:

Improved root development going into winter and next spring.

Water penetration and evacuation.

Gas exchange both oxygen good and too much carbon dioxide(bad).

Stimulate plant growth/health.

We will do additional brushing later in week where sand is a little mire concentrated to improve ball roll and assist with our first mow.  Our first mow will be when it is dry later in week as turf begins to grow through sand.

#2 finished, a little sandy but holes filled.