Drain/Cover, Restrict/Educate and Pound Sand

 Well, it appears we are coming out of winter in pretty good condition generally speaking. All of our turf has not awakened but I am seeing a tinge of green in some of our zoysia areas. We still have to see if some high traffiked areas are damaged from foot and or carts. More on traffic later.  

DRAIN/COVER

The drain and cover part our blog would not have occurred without some dry weather at the first of the month. This allowed us to make great progress on the drainage project from 6 cart path all the way down to 8 cart path. We finished installing of our small drain lines and covered as much as we could in sod. Over 1,800 yards of zoysia and fescue were laid in various areas. The front of 6 green approach and 8 fairway were covered in zoysia. The left rough on 8 and a few strips along the drain line in front of 7 tee were covered. The remaining areas still need some additional soil and a little bit of settling time.

Laying zoysia sod in front of 6 approach. 30 yard rolls.

After adding some additional soil to the left of 6 green Skip is smoothing it out. Still need to add more dirt to the area and more grading once the rain has stopped.

Some finish soil to help smooth out 8 fairway drainage site.

Skip grading on 8 fairway.

We used the forks on the box to break up the soil surface. We then graded with the box blade finished graded with our bunker rake. Our sod producer who was one of the owners of the company complimented us on our finish grade work. Sorry, for some reason didnt take a finish grade picture.

Big roll sodding 8 fairway.

Almost complete, had to bring in more zoysia the next day with the fescue.

Looking from the green side of 8 across the zoysia.

Big roll fescue going in on the left rough.

From 8 cart path looking across toward 7. Just waiting on some drier and warmer weather weather to get this area opened. It will need to firm considerably before we open it for play.

Signage and ropes asking you to avoid these wet areas at the bottom of 3 green.

Looking across 8 near the intersection of 7 tee cart path. With exposed soil above the newly sodded area, we decided to put some hay bales across to catch the soil from washing down on the new sod until we can get it covered with grass. Bottom right foreground are a few stips of fescue we had left over from 8 rough that we laid on solid ground that was not disturbed except from construction traffic ..

RESTRICT/EDUCATE

With the warm weather comes an increase in cart traffic. With increased cart traffic comes the need to restict cart traffic to slow the potential damage to emerging turf which is slow to awaken from its winter slumber. I made some soical media posts regarding cart traffic and the damage that can be caused from excessive wear. I thought it would be important to include it as a part of the blog post for those of you who do not follow our social media accounts.

We have various areas of the course which have springs coming out of them until the summer. There is of course just regular water weeping for short periods of time after heavy periods of rain from slopes into lower lying areas like illustrated below on 3. We have cart signs and ropes in areas on #3, #12 and #13 at this time. There could be other areas that develop over time that we will monitor and might have to place additional restrictions.

3 Fairway directing carts around wet areas next to hill side.

We have a number of holes that have permanenent stakes and decorative rope to force traffic to stay on the path until arriving past the starting points of the fairway. In most cases, carts should be driven on the path and then turn 90 degree into the fairway. Going directly from the teeing ground straight through the rough into the fairway creates signicant wear and tear at the beginning of the rough and fairway. 

Many are using these areas like they are interstate on ramps. 

We understand if you hit a shot that is short of the fairway. Its okay to take your cart to the ball and then move to the fairway. Golfers in carts are kind of like cattle and or dogs, They walk or drive the same trail, walk along the fence the same place without thinking of the damage that is occuring. Excess wear and tear costs money and time in renovation and makes the course not look its best. 

This is a pirme area of concern off of 3 cart path. The path comes straight down the hill and turns to go alongside of the fairway. The area at the bottom of the hill has a tendency to be a little wetter than other areas as well. You should not drive straight through to the fairway. 

No means NO CARTS proceed through this area. Carts should remain on the path and then turn left somewhere past the drain area to go across to your ball laying in the fairway. If its over in the left tree line, you can still cross the fairway at a 90 degree angle from the cart path.

Area at the start of eight fairway is roped off to reduce wear and tear. We have also roped off areas on  four, five and seven. As you might not be aware, this takes time away from 

the mowing team as they are mowing the rough. You have to get off your mower, take the stakes down, mow through and then get back off the mower and put them back in place. At times, a manager will be doing other things and will stop in and help remove the stakes but it takes time. I like the natural look of a course and don't like to have to put up stakes and signs but this is something we are forced to do if we want these areas to look good.

Please assist us this season in reducing cart traffic issues by following a 90 degree rule as often as possible.

POUND SAND

No, were are not saying get lost. We are pounding sand into our greens to improve the overall growth of our greens both above and below surface. Our contractor arrived on Tuesday and used three machines to do this work. Cloudy and wet conditions slowed our process but we were able to complete all nineteen greens by the end of the day. 

Dry sand is injected into the surface of the greens with a bead of water with a force of 2-3000 psi. The work is completed on 3"x3" centers. It takes about 10-15 gallons of sand for each pass on the green. Our staff had to move about 40 tons of sand in 5 gallon buckets at a time to fill the sand hoppers on the units. We normally brush and roll the greens but we had to wait until Wednesday to complete this operation. There area a number of benefits in doing this process;

• Opens the surface of the greens to improve infiltration of moisture into drier areas and allows wetter areas to dry more quickly
• Allows sand to be injected into the green mixing with the thatch and assisting in its control
• Provides new pathways for roots to grow and branch/spread
• The sand expands out wider than a normal 1/2" aeration hole as it reaches the 4-5" range of depth
• There is not a lot of excess sand on the surface which is a positive of the process. The remaining sand is brushed into the canapy which improves protection of the crowns of plants and also helps to smooth the greens surface.

Below is an illustration from the Dryject website on how it works. Further down the page is a quick video of the process. We also intend to deep tine our greens to about 8" if the rain ever stops. We might be forced to do this over a number of days and do it when we are open. We will do everything we can to not inhibit play  I wll keep you informed as time goes by when this process will begin. This double aearation process is necessary to help improve the drainage in our greens.

Seed and rough grass beginning to pop

A majority of our turf regeneration efforts are done in the fall with drill seeding close rough and late fall fertilization.  Once the turf awakens in the spring, we evaluate our progress and make plans for further renovation as necessary.  We drilled 4000 pounds of a fescue/bluegrass mixture last fall into thinned rough areas.

We began to use our renovaire aerator at the end of March to pull cores on all of the rough.  That effort is still going with Skip closing in on the last two holes.  Around he first of April, we over seeded a very large area on the left of #3 with Fescue.  It has been drill seeded in the fall as well.  This area is over burdened with shade and the trees out compete the weakened turf grass for available moisture.  We will add a part circle head in this area which should increase the amount of moisture this area receives.  Some root pruning of the trees should be helpful but there are 3 layers of trees in this area which reduces our ability to prune the total area.

Seeding is very limited in the spring due to pre-emergent applications being made at the same time but the area on 3 is in deep shade so we made sure it was not sprayed.  The area covered about 20 yds from the fairway to 12 cart path and  about 50 yards long.  The grass seed has germinated and is about an inch tall as seen in the picture below. A little patchy but our nemesis poa annua usually fills in the voids pretty quickly.

The staff used almost 200 yards of sod behind 15 green and used another 200 yards of sod on stump holes and worn, rutted areas around trees.  The delay in turf green up and subsequent rough growth has put our turf a couple of weeks behind. My first rough mowing of the year was a week later than last year. This week we are making  sure the close rough is getting mowed twice before the rains set in. The turf is beginning to expand and grow and in most cases will fill in the voids in the rough.  There are still some areas that will get some attention but in most cases there will be more than enough grass to swallow your errant shots from the short grass fairways and tees.

Area on #3 that was seeded the first of April. New grass growing but existing turf that was there has filled in the area quite nicely with increases in temperatures and timely rain. 

Germinating seed on #3 green

Our greens continue to improve each day and the bentgrass seed that we placed on #3 green last Friday has now emerged from some of the rescue tine holes.  These seedlings in combination of the continued regrowth from the weakened bentgrass that is reviving will help to discourage the amount of poa annua that will attempt to invade these areas.  We will begin to do some plugging over the next few days to continue with the repair.  The staff also made a couple of more collar repairs as the continue the trend of normal to less than normal temperatures.

Seedlings emerging at the tip of the knife.

Same picture but a close up of the little squiggly bentgrass seedlings at the tip of the blade.

13 Blue tee renovation

The blue tee renovation on #13 was completed Friday afternoon.  It included the same process as #4, tilling of the tees, laser leveling and then using a tractor and many crew members to help lay out the big rolls of sod onto the tee.  The soil was beginning to soften throughout the middle due to the amount of moisture in it so we had to roll the roll out next to the tee and then a multiple members of the staff would pull it onto the tee.

The tee after rough grading the day before by Skip.

Mike McNeil from Laserturf Leveling doing the finish leveling of the tee.  The tee will drain from front to back and from right side to the left side.

The staff laying the fescue sod on the tee surround.  The tee top has  already been completed.

The finished product.  I think it fits in much better in the landscape and will provide many differing playing locations.  It ended up about 30' across and about 44'  in depth.

The view from the front of the tee.

My intentions are to have the tee open for the Invitational in 19 days.

Seeding rough

In an effort to improve the turf in some of our rough areas, we are doing some drill-seeding into the weaker areas. Yesterday, Skip used our tractor and drill seeder to do areas in the trees lines which were less than adequately covered in turf. Some of these areas included under the trees between 1-18, 3-12, 4, 5, 7-8, 8-10 and along 16.

The seeder is actually up in the air in the picture below. We work in straight lines because of the blades and the damage that can occur if we turn with the machine on the ground. The seeder drills a line in the ground, seed is then dropped down a small chute and slides to the ground where it is compacted by the roller on the back of the machine and helps to press the seed so it comes in contact with the ground.

The blades below are in the front of the machine. They are pto driven which spins rather quickly as we move forward. This is what cuts into the ground. We set the depth to about 1/2" which gives the seed adequate depth to begin to germinate and will take root. There are blades every 2" which go across the front of the machine at a total width of 4'.

Below are the slits or lines in the turf that are made by the blades in the last photo. The turf seed will germinate in the lines and begin to grow. We attempt to seed at a specific rate to improve the overall turf coverage. Too many seedlings make for a weakened turf stand. Not enough seeds leads to less coverage in an area which can lead to less turf in a given area as well. There is some mortality in seeding of turf. Birds remove a small percentage of the seed. There are times when the seed does not fall directly into the slit in the ground. This can lead to poor soil contact and weakened rooting of the seedling.

The back of the machine is shown below. The tubes are where the seed moves down to the ground surface. As the machine rolls along the ground, there is a wheel which turns. The turning of this wheel moves a mechanism in the seed box which turns at the top of the tubes and forces seed to drop down the tubes to the ground. If the machine is not moving, seed is not being distributed. The roller or packer on the back of the machine will help press the seed into contact with the ground. We use a cart and drag mat to aid in this process which is of utmost importance. If the seed does not make good contact with the ground, it will have less of a chance to root and survive.

We intend to seed into some close fairway rough in the next 7-10 days. We just spayed our bermuda suppressant/eradication material in our rough to assist our cool season turf to expand its influence in our rough. Our hope is that this will weaken the bermuda as it begins to prepare for winter and it will be severely injury over the winter. An additional application made next spring should also suppress the material as well as it tries to grow from winter dormancy. The material that we sprayed requires that new seed either be far enough along to have been mowed once or twice or we delay seeding. I chose to delay seeding because the drill part of our seeding operation disturbs the bermuda grass and creates a pretty ugly scene for a couple of weeks. The weather this summer has been less stressful on our rough turf which reduces the amount of renovation needed for next season. We are placing about 1 ton of seed down to continue to increase our fescue turf in our close rough areas in hopes of replacing and or competing with the bermuda grass.

Green Collar nursery renovation

Its been a few weeks since I've posted on the blog. Time to get back into the swing of things.

We've been working the past couple of weeks in the area to the front and left of 16 tee and to the left of Hole #2. This is an area that we are going to grow bentgrass for next fall to begin replacement of some of our poa infested collars. It will also serve us during the season in case any collars become damaged and need replacement turf. It will be mowed at our current collar height of .300" once it has matured next season.

A few weeks ago we used roundup and broadleaf weed control products to kill the weeds including bermuda that were growing in the area. We also had to use our sod cutter to remove some of the material that was laying on top and to cut a border around the outside of the area.

The area is about 55 x 100 feet. The lower 1/4 of the area will be placed in fescue because it has a tendency to hold too much moisture. Our total bent nursery area will be about 3500-4000 square feet.

The pictures below show the nursery with water being applied to it. We placed a granular soil fumigant material on the surface to eliminate any additional weed seeds and disease which could be in the soil. We watered this material in and continue to place moisture on top of the sand to keep the material active in the subsurface. In about 10-12 days, we will add some nutrients to the base and will seed it with our Cato/Crenshaw mixture which is currently on our greens.

The picture below is of our collar on the practice green near Dr. Ott's clock. The area between the Sweetgum tree and the planter wall in fron of the pro shop is mostly poa annua. The rest of the collar is in pretty good shape and has a majority of bentgrass in its area. Right now, we are treating our greens with Trimmit(Paclobutrazol) which is a growth regulator that slows the growth of both our bent and poa. An added benefit of applying this material is that it suppresses and reduces the competitiveness of the poa, and in some cases will kill the poa. The fall applications do not usually kill the poa. Its the spring to summer applications that can put some serious harm in the poa so this is a product we have to be very careful in applying.

Ok, the picture below shows a spot of bentgrass that my telephone is in the middle of. The bentgrass has a tendency to be darker in color and lays over. Poa makes for a great putting surface because of the number of plants per square foot and it stays more upright but it has serious disease and heat issues in our part of the country.

The following picture is a collar on the same green that has a majority of bentgrass in it. The phone is sitting in a small population of poa. Our spray program will have the affect of continuing to reduce this poa population plus at the same time increasing the bentgrass population. When we aerify in October, we intend to seed some additional bentgrass into the greens to continue to add to our bentgrass plant bank and add more new plants to the green surface.