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.

Needle tine venting, Fairway Aeration, Bermuda Eradication, Green Surround Renovation, and Fathers

Happy Father's Day. My Dad has been gone for 28 years now. A great deal of life has occurred since he went to be with our Lord. Follow the best I can with the lessons he taught me daily on how to live a full life. Sharing your time and treasure to lift up people was one trait he shared regularly. The last day of his life he spent a day in a small town trying to build a new Kiwanis Club that would share in the giving he believed in so much. Its an honor to be your son!

A busy couple of months on the golf course as we barge head first into summer. Allow me a few moments to summarize our work.

Our new zoysia tee and surround areas are trying to establish themselves and mature. Some a little better than others but we moved into some warm weather conditions that will help push it along. Teeing ground turf will be a little slower to respond because of its concentrated wear from teeing it up but we will continue to encourage its maturity. Will begin some sand topdressing to help smooth out the surfaces and help them fill in.

We sprayed the weed contamination on the surround on 5 and 6 where the turf is established. We also sprayed some bermuda encroachment in these areas as well. Speaking of bermuda eradication, we will begin our fairway applications in the next few days as weather allows. Please see the video below for further explanation.

6 Green surround continues to improve. Weed control applied and we've opened the right side bunkers for play.

Fairways and tees were aerated last. We still have a few tees left including the ranges, the approaches and close green surround zoysia areas. We will do this work as weather and time allows over the next week or two.

We also Vented the greens using a very thin 5/16 needle tine. We also double topdressed the greens over a 5 day period last week.

Why vent the greens? You just aerated them at the end of March twice. Venting is a process that is used because it reduces surface disturbance but improves performance of our root growing area in the plants. 

1. It improves gas exchange. Oxygen in and carbon dioxide out which can build up over time in the root zone.
2. Allows water to penetrate in hard to wet areas and can dry wet areas more quickly with air entering the subsurface.
3. The surface closes rather quickly but the small channels into the green surface going down 4-5" allow for roots to improve and thrive. Research has shown that these small pathways can be effective up to 3 weeks.
4. The lack of basic infrastructure in our greens(no drainage systems) places puts us at a disadvantage when it comes to dealing with adverse conditions including high heat and heavy moisture. This regular program allows our greens to combat some of the problems we face.
5. As you will see in the video below, there are 48 venting tines on the machine. Our greens average about 5,000 sq ft. Thats about 145,000 vents into each green assisting approximately 142,000,000 million bent grass and poa plants to survive. Approximately 1,500 plants per sq foot.

We have not been walking mowing our greens but plan on getting that started this week. We have 3 new staff members for the summer who we will begin to train along with our experienced group to incorporate this into our program for the summer to improve green conditioning.

Thanks for your time and I will try to get back to posting some additional work on the blog in the upcoming weeks ahead.

  

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.

Bermuda Eradication, Hydrojecting, Aerating Tees and More

Bermuda eradication work is going well with our first spray that took place around July 23rd.  Short video which stopped before I could complete my explanation(maybe my camera is telling me something). Larger Bermuda patches are pretty obvious from the red color that the Bermuda gives off as the chemical is taking effect. I was not trying to scare everyone off when I made the post regarding take your pictures now. I just knew that areas of the course would not look quite as green as they did but they still look pretty good when you see the effects the chemicals are making on the Bermuda. It will take more applications to get a pretty solid kill. The overwintering spray has a tendency to be the most effective.

I will make another application in the next couple of weeks and will complete the third application toward the end of September which will help us considerably for next season. Some of the Bermuda areas that are intermingled in the Zoysia are not as easy to locate but their are plenty of areas like this that we need to continue to hammer with these products to help push them out completely.

We do have some pretty serious issues with contamination in our intermediates in which some areas have little or no Zoysia. The left side of 10, right side of 5 and a few other areas where the Bermuda has moved from the rough into the fairway. This is coincidentally the areas which are sometimes shaded as well which discourages Zoysia and encourages Bermuda. Some of these areas will be treated with RoundUp and killed off completely and then sodded. I might do a couple of these just before dormancy this fall and then replace them in the spring with new sod.  Looks like it is dead anyway when it goes into dormancy and will help us next spring get an early jump on sodding.

https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=CqIuKoZvhi8






On Tuesday, E&E Enterprises whom we contract with to vent our greens with the Hydroject machines  arrived on property and completed our 100K sq/ft of greens in about 4 hours. A very short video of a couple seconds posted below. Did not realize I had my camera set on time lapse at the time and they were gone when I decided to put the video on YouTube.

As usual, 4-5" in depth improving our greens in a number of ways with gas exchange, oxygen in, carbon dioxide that builds in soil out. Improved rooting with channels formed that are full of oxygen. We do not get a lot of new roots this time of year due to high soil temperatures, just checked this afternoon and at 2" of depth about 90 degrees. Also improves infiltration of water and drying of areas with excessive water.

https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=4j1L_PIcWBU





Deep-tine aerated our Zoysia tees last week with an 1/2" tine to a depth of 4-5". As you know, we core aerated a couple of weeks ago so a 2nd aeration in less than a month. This should improve drainage on some tees which have large amounts of water running over them because they are at ground level and water drains across the tee. We hope to rebuild a number of these tees over the next few years to improve playability and turf quality.

Intend to get the rest of the bare spots in fairway areas covered with Zoysia in the next few days. We will also go after a few cool season rough spots near greens and bunkers with some fescue if we don't get too warm to start improving areas for the late summer and fall. I Intend to take our green height back to our normal height of cut for the weekend since our weather appears to be moderating. That will result in an actual height lowered by the thickness of 1 piece of standard copy paper.

Hope to see you out on the course over the next few weeks.

Video Regarding Tee Aeration, Juvenile Red-tailed Hawks and Other Information

Rain put a damper on our tee aeration plans today. We will probably finish the work next week. Video discusses that work as well as the fairway turf situation, greens bunker edging and a couple of other areas. Photos below also add to discussion later of these subjects later in the video.

Our Red-Tailed Hawks picked up stakes and moved to the Sycamore near 5 White/Blue tee this year. I had kind of lost track of them this season until Ms. Herrin mentioned where they were located. If my eyes don't deceive me I think we have 2 juveniles about ready to take off on their 1st flights soon!

https://youtu.be/0kS6uzl8yzU

Bunker edging. Sand was deep enough along edge I had to use a spade shovel to reform the edge. Back 9 are complete as is  Holes 8-9. Hope to finish the rest of the front next week.

From time to time you will notice some black algae appearing on greens. This usually occurs because of climatic conditions, warm and humid conditions and sometimes and the end or past time for a fungicide application. The past 6 weeks have seen a weekly application of some type of required spraying product either it be a growth regulator, summer root disease management product and wetting agents to keep profile consistent in its moisture content.

This is from the 2nd green and the ugly reddish colored turf is poa annua which does not like Paclobutrazol, a growth regulator product we have been spraying every 30 days or so to help reduce the impacts of poa on our greens. My last application last week was 1/2 the rate of the month before.  As we get into summer, we cannot over stress the poa annua or it becomes poa deadua.  Too much poa annua dying quickly could contribute to yours truly's untimely demise. This type of condition does help bentgrass grow into the area and improve our total amount of bentgrass coverage. Losing 20-50 poa annua is something I do not want to see in my lifetime unless I was spraying Round Up and trying to kill it. 

Update on Greens and a Couple of Other Notes

Anyone who played over the last few days probably noticed open holes on greens. Some of the holes opened up because wet sand had closed the hole during core dragging and did not allow the dry sand to penetrate. The rain from last week then opened up the hole. Also, in our haste to get all greens cored before the rains hit last week, we were a little light on our sand application and the time we took to blow sand in the holes. Today we added additional sand to the Pg, 1-4 and got almost every hole topped off. The staff will hopefully get the rest completed tomorrow or by Wednesday at the latest. A few of the greens were in good shape with a majority of the holes filled.

The cool season tees on 2,3,5,10,14,17 were core aerated and material hauled away. We brushed the tees and blew the remaining material off the tee. Sand will be used on the tees to help with drainage, root development, and compaction.  A little fertilizer will be applied over the next couple of days as well.

After the cold temperatures from over the weekend, the staff placed the water cooler and ice machine at the pro shop for your use.

Coring long range tee and solid tining/topdressing all tees on course

We core aerated the long range tee, applied some heavy sand topdressing, removed the cores, brushed and mowed the tee.  We also solid tined all of our tees on Monday/Tuesday to a depth of 5" with a 10% kick put in our Verti-drain 7316 which helps to fracture the soil allowing for improved rooting and moisture movement through the turf profile.  We also applied a heavy topdressing of sand on the tees to smooth the tee surfaces, improve tees entering the ground, improve water movement through the surface and provide a rooting medium in the aeration holes.  Below is a video of the long range tee work.

Warm season tee core aeration

We would have started our warm season core pulling aeration on Monday but the surfaces were too wet from Sunday night rainfall.  We are pulling a 1/2" core at about 2" in depth to reduce thatch on our tees with our verti-drain machine.  Not sure if we will be completely finished today with the heavy dew we are experiencing and avoiding disrupting any play that is taking place.  We are doing parts of combined tees or doing individuals tees to insure that you have a clean place to tee your ball from while we clean up the debris.  Once the area has been cleaned, we will then come back in and do the remaining tees as needed.   We will also use the same machine but will place a 1/2" solid tine on it which will give us a much deeper hole.  This will allow the tees to drain much quicker and will improve root health.  We also plan to topdress the tees with sand which will get into the holes and will assist in removing excess moisture from the tee surface.  It will smooth the teeing surface over time with additional applications.  They will be slightly drier on the surface because the sand will allow moisture to move into the profile quicker and will make for easier penetration of tees being placed in the ground.

See the video below for additional information.

Solid deep tined aeration of tees

We are attempting to get as many tees as possible aerated today before the rain arrives.  We are using our Verti-drain deep tined aerate on all the tees.  The video below shows the process.

Warm season tee aeration completed on Monday

The staff core aerated the warm season tees with coring tines on our verti-drain aerator.  The cores were picked up at the end of each run.  The tees were then dragged with a screen drag, blown off and then mowed.  The 1.5" of rain over the last 10 days helped with softening the tees.  We will do a solid tine deep aeration in the next week or two to help us with deeper water penetration into the tees.

Core aeration of warm season tees

We attempted to core aerate our warm season tees last week but the ground was too dry and hard for the operation to work properly.  We did get a few tees on #1, 2, 4 and the red tee on 6 before we stopped the operation.  Tees were fertilized last week which will improve recovery from the aeration.  With the rain on Monday and increased watering of our tees, we should be able to get back on the program this coming Monday with the course being closed.  Our operation includes pulling a 3-4" core, removing the cores and cleaning the surface for play.  We will roll the tees to smooth the surface and will then mow the tees to finish the work.  This practice will assist our tees in a number of ways:

1. Reduce thatch build up in the zoysia.
2. Improve water penetration which makes for a better playing surface but at the same time slowing water penetration in the small reservoirs created by the aeration holes..
3. Reduce compaction of the tee allowing a tee to enter the ground more easily.
4. Improve gas exchange with oxygen entering the soil and carbon dioxide leaving the soil. 
5. Improved root growth in the aeration holes. 

Cool season tees core aerated

The cool season tees were core aerated yesterday.  The tees make up parts of holes 2, 3, 10, 11, 14 and 17.  Cool season tees from what I can tell have been used at times here at Glen Echo because of shade conditions.  Zoysia/bermuda do not grow well under low light conditions.  Cool season tees cost us more money to maintain because pest pressure and renovation including seeding must be ongoing during throughout the season.  The solution for this problem is to remove trees which is practical in some situations and not as practical in other situations.  

Once the aeration was complete, the tees were topdressed with sand and the sand was brushed into the holes.  We need to add some additional sand to fill the holes but overall the process went well.  The core aeration improves water penetration as well as water retention near the top few inches in the root zone.  Water moves away from the surface but will also sit in the aeration hole and slowly move down through the root zone profile.  It also improves gas exchange with O2 entering the soil and CO2 leaving the soil.  The sand topdressing gives an improved environment for root health in the holes and will improve surface drainage as we continue to place more sand on the surface and raise the level of the tee.  It also softens the surface allowing a tee to be placed into the ground with ease.  We core aerate tees in the spring and fall.

Tom Lewis aerating #10 tee.  We went to a depth of 3-3 1/2" in depth with a 1/2" tine. 

The drag attached to the aerator so it can drag the cores to the end of the tee .

Piles of plugs at the end of the tee ready for removal.

 

Stress on some zoysia tees

The core aeration of our zoysia tees last week placed some stress to our zoysia tees, especially since it stayed in the 100 degree range.  Opening the tee canopy and  dragging the tees does add stress and will dry out the surfaces which did occur on isolated tees.  Our tees have good irrigation coverage but stress will show up on some tees that do not have adequate water coverage.  A few of the forward red tees only receive water from rough and our fairway coverage heads which at times are not spaced properly to get the proper water to relieve stress.  We've increased the watering totals over the last few days and the tees are beginning to show some relief from the stress they have experienced.  Cooler weather and rain will get the tees back to normal in the next few days.

Our cool season tees continue to react negatively to the hot and dry weather of the last few weeks.  They should respond in a positive way to changes in weather as well.

Red tees of #2 showing some stress from aeration and drought stress.

Warm season tee aeration

The staff worked on coring our warm season tees yesterday and should finish the remaining tees today.  This is helpful for a number of reasons:

• Moisture will penetrate the tee more quickly during rain events allowing the tee to become more   playable in a shorter time and allow mowing to be completed.
• Moisture can move into the root zone more quickly allow for a healthier plant and less water applied.
• Small reservoirs are created by the aeration holes during rain events which help to move water off of the surface but then slowly moves into the root zone.  
• Thatch removal occurs as well.
• We will topdress in a few days which will help to fill the holes with sand which will improve overall drainage and firmness of the tee and smooths the surfaces.  This will also assist a player in placing the tee into the ground due to the softer condition created by not only the aeration hole but the sand application.   

We will be doing a deep solid tine aeration in the next few weeks as well which will help us with deeper drainage, especially in the winter reducing crown damage from lack of water being able to move away from the crown of the plants.  It will also make for better playing conditions for our winter golfers.

Tom Lewis using our Verti-drain to pull the cores.  The silver drag on the back helps pull a majority of the cores to the edge.

Pile of cores at the end of the tee ready for pick up.

Skip and Russ picking up the pile of cores for disposal.

Jeff dragging the remaining cores on the tee to break them and help work the remaining soil into the canopy.

Demarcus, Tom and Nick blowing the remnants of the cores off of the tee in preparation to be dry mowed today.

Cool season tee aeration

Once we completed our greens, it was time to do our cool season tees.  #1 blue, blue and white of #2, #3, blue/white #5, blue #10, white #11, blue #14.  We were able to place the drag on the back of our verti-drain and drug the cores the end of the tee.  Tom then picked up the cores with a shovel and hauled away.  We blew them off this morning.  We still need to topdress the tees with sand in an effort to get some sand channels down through the soil profile into the plug holes.  We will then drag them to smooth them out and will finally fertilize the tee tops.  We intend to topdress our tees with the machine regularly this season to begin to build up a layer of sand over the tee profile.  There are a number of reasons why tees should be topdressed:

• Smooth the teeing ground surface.
• Improved root health with a mixture of sand and soil allowing for more oxygen to penetrate into the profile.  .
• Protect the crowns of the plant with sand.
• The surface of the tee will drain quicker with a layer of sand on top and sand channels for the water to penetrate into the profile of the tee.  
• Easier to place a tee in the ground through a layer of sand than soil.
  
  

  

  Russell on #14 tee.  Screen drag on the back of the aerator which pulls the cores to the end of the tee for easy clean up.



Cores waiting for Tom to pick them up and haul away.



















Solid tining zoysia tees

On Monday of this week, we used a solid 1/2" tine on our zoysia tees to provide some deep aerating to our tees.  We were able to go about 5-6" in depth to provide moisture penetration, additional rooting and exchange oxygen into our tees which can become heavily compacted.  This was a non-disruptive type operation and in most cases the holes could not be seen because of the density of the turf.  We will also be doing some core aerating in the next week or two along with our fairways which begin on Monday after the Invitational.

Russ using our Verti-drain 7316 to poke holes in our tees.

Tee aeration and mowing

Our cool season tees being deep tine aerified on Thursday 3-27-09. The cool season signifies that the turf is at its full strength during the cooler seasons of the year. Varieties include bluegrass, poa, rye and bentgrass. The tees that were included in this work were on holes #1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 11, and 17. Russ is operating the equipment and Harry is checking out the plug drag which is on the back of the unit. We are going about 3-4" in depth and pulled a core like the greens. We will do a solid tine aerification on these tees in the next month or so at a 4-6" depth. The zoysia tees will be aerified when they are more actively growing in May, June and July.















The picture above demonstrates the plug drag in action. The tee is aerified and as the machine moves across the tee, the plugs are pulled along behind the machine by the attached drag. Once the tee is completed, the plugs aer scooped up with shovels at the end of the tee and are hauled away. We placed most of this material in ruts and washouts in various areas of the course.

The tees were then sanded with about 1/3 as much sand as we placed on the greens. We utilized the brush mechanism on the back of the topdresser which allowed us to place a narrow band of sand on the tee surface. The spinning type mechanism would have thrown the sand off of the tees which are more narrow in width. We are attempting to get sand onto and into the tees
for the following reasons:

• Keep the surface of tee slightly drier which helps with playability, mowing and potential disease reduction.
• Reduce earthworm castings.(Earthworms do not like the abrasive nature of the sand we use. They will moved to a more friendly site)
• Easier to place tee into the ground in and sandy soil then just soil.

Tees need to have sand added to them on a regular basis to assist in the overall health of the turf. Once they were sanded, a metal drag was pulled onto them by a cart which helped to break up some of the remaining plugs and move the sand down into the profile of the turf. The tees were mowed and then fertilized with a 1/2" of Nitrogen in which 75% was of a poly coated material that will last about 8 weeks. Additional amounts of fertilizer will be applied every month to help with turf health and recovery from play.

Skip on the rough mower Thursday out ahead of the spray rig which was being operated by Mike. The rough is beginning to grow and I wanted to clean the close in areas up for a pre-emergent and weed killer spray which Mike was putting out in the rough. The pre-emergent will help prevent crabgrass and goosegrass and the weed killer will kill broad leaf weeds such as knotweed, dandelions and other less desirable species.