Frost Season is upon us

Well, its getting that time of year where we need to have a discussion regarding frost, the delays that can be incurred and why we don't allow golf to be played on frosty turf surfaces.

The last thing we want to do is to delay your enjoyment on the golf course but sometimes mother nature requires us to be patient and wait a few minutes because of frost.  We have faced a few days of frost over the last several weeks but it has only been present on the rough grass and has melted away before any players were attempting to start their rounds.  Frost early in the season might only require a few minutes delay but as the temperatures become increasingly colder, the restrictions could last an hour or two.

Any delay will include the practice green as well so no practice putting until the restrictions have been lifted on the putting green.  There are occasions where #1 is still frost covered and the PG area has cleared off. 

The USGA has a great animated explanation of frost delays in the link below.

   http://www.usga.org/turf/articles/video/frost.html

Winter weather predictions

Climate prediction models from the National Weather Service for the U.S.A. from Dec.-Feb are posted below.  These models are updated every 15 days which allow for greater confidence in the predictions as it gets closer to winter.

They are predicting a potentially warmer than normal and wetter than normal winter.

Damage to the 12th green

Last evening, multiple individuals broke a pane of glass out of one of our shop windows and took 3 carts out on property.  They stole my digital camera that I use for the blog but left everything else in place.  The 3 carts were found out on the course in the area of 3 and 4 where they have been entering the property.  They did some damage to our #12 green which you can see in the picture below.  The damage should be able to be repaired fairly quickly.  The green was aerated yesterday which probably helped to reduce some of the damage due to the heavy application of sand.  There were some turn marks on the 2nd and 15th greens but they did not break the turf's surface.  Hopefully, we can catch this group of vandals and get this damage stopped.

The left side middle of  #12 green

Greens aeration complete

The remaining 10 greens were aerated today.  The greens aerated last week were mowed as well this afternoon with the riding greens mower.  Rains expected over the next day or two will help the sand settle and will allow the turf to grow more than it has over the last couple of very dry weeks.  Mother nature's rainfall is much better for growing turf than our irrigation system.  I expect our ball roll to continue to improve throughout the week.  We should be able to mow first thing in the morning by early next week as the turf grows through the sand.

Congrats to staff member Jason Thomas and his wife Stephanie on the birth of their first child

Congratulations to staff member Jason Thomas and his wife Stephanie on the birth of their first child.  Camryn Gloria Thomas arrived Tuesday morning, 5 lb. 14 oz.  Everyone is doing fine and going home today.

Deep tined greens aeration continued

We have been able to complete 8 greens over the last couple of days with our fall deep tined aeration program after the outing on Tuesday and before regular play in the mornings.  Greens 1-4, 15-16, 18 and the PG have been completed.  17 green will be completed tomorrow morning.  We hope to complete the remaining 9 greens by Monday(we will work until dark) or Tuesday morning at the latest.  It is always our desire to complete our greens program within a couple of days so that recovery of all greens occurs at the same time but weather and business interests require us to adapt our strategy from time to time.  We still have some great growing weather over the next few weeks for our greens to recover but I did not want to delay our program for another week.  We've had exceptional conditions to complete the greens this week without interfering with any groups except for a couple of early morning single players.  Weather sites have been reporting over the last 7 days that a change in our dry pattern(rain) is going to take place over the weekend and possibly into next week so it was time to start.            

We began today to dry mow the greens that were aerated on Tuesday(1-4).  The greens had an additional dragging of the surface and the subsequent mowing of them looked great.  The process we utilize in completing our aeration is slow and takes at least two days and sometimes a part of a 3rd day to complete.

Our desire is to have equal or better ball roll within a few days of completing our work as what we had before the process started.  

We appreciate your consideration during this most important process.

Russ aerating 18 green with our 7316 Verti-drain.
Mechanic Harry did the honors on Tuesday.

The rear view of our process.  We placed the sand on the green first to reduce the potential tracking from our sand topdressor and utility vehicle.  Normally our sand applications are made with a spinning type broad casting mechanism but with a heavy band type application, we used our brush attachment which provided a 1/8' layer of sand on the green.  Most greens received about 2.5 tons of sand on average.

The spacing of the aeration holes in relation to my cell phone.  About 2.5" apart.

This is a view of Russ dragging today of one of our finished greens from Tuesday.  We normally used our drag brush directly after the aeration was complete and before the sand was blown in the holes.

Here Russ is using our leaf blower to blow sand across the green which helps to fill holes full of sand.

Tom is also helping to fill holes along the edge where excess sand can build up.

Assistant Mike is rolling the green to smooth the surface and place it back into play.  Normally, we will mow our greens at the end of the process but our turf is so tight at this time from recent grooming/verti-cutting that there is very little turf that needed to be cut.  We will brush the greens again on the second day after aeration and will then mow them as they begin to grow.

4 green today after being brushed and mowed.

The greens surface with holes filled with sand and the turf being stood up from the brushing activity and heavy sand topdressing.

Beginning of greens aeration

We were only able to get 4 greens aerated yesterday(Greens 1-4).  Overall, they turned out well.  We have a little extra sand on #4 that needs to be moved around but a majority of the holes were filled with sand.  We are planning to do the PG this morning to get it completed so it will be healed with the others.  #18 will be done as well since it is at the end of play and we will be able to get it completed before play makes its way around.  15 greens to complete next Monday are just too many in one day with the heavy application of sand and the amount of time it takes to work it into a green.  I will take some pictures of the operation this morning and post them in the next day or two.  Too busy yesterday to get proper pictures since I was doing the topdressing and helping to get the sand worked into the holes.