Pound the pavement, Pound sand, You talkin about practice!

 Well, its been quite some time since I've made a blog post so let's get after it. 

POUND THE PAVEMENT

That's been my phrase since I became motivated to change my health regimen at the beginning of December. Thirty pounds lost with a goal of another fifteen over the next few months. Diet generally has changed with throwing wheat out of my intake. Pretty difficult initially when I consumed 6-8 servings a day which a majority of it included bread, donuts and cookies. Active here at the club and on my job but a lack of control and will power with food intake has been an issue forever for me. Hopefully, after discussing potential retirement in just a few years, its time for a permanent change in healthy eating and some regular movement away from the job.

POUND SAND

Over this past week we have brought in over 60 tons of sand to place on and or into our golf greens here at Glen Echo. We contracted with a company to perform the Dryject operation on our greens and begin to do our deep-tine solid aeration using our Verti-drain aerator. We used about 35 tons of sand in completing this operation.

Dryject machine injecting sand with a 3000 psi bead of water and sand into the green about 5". You can see the staff filling 5 gallon buckets of dry sand to load the machine. It takes about 2 buckets or more across the green before it will run out.

3 x 3 spacing after completion. Greens were brushed and rolled after this picture was taken.

We are planning on deep-tine aerating our greens on Monday, March 21st. We do not all of them completed in one day so decided to get some of the greens completed this week. We did greens 15, 17, and 18 on Wednesday and completed greens 5-6, 8-9 on Thursday. The aerating process included the following;

• Sanding greens ahead to reduce tire rutting
• Aerate greens
• Apply soil enrichment fertilizer
• Blow sand in holes
• Brush greens and change holes
• Roll greens and apply an organic fertilizer

Skip apply a heavy coating of sand on the greens before bringing the tractor on the green and punching hole. Takes about 2 loads of sand per green, approximately 2 tons.

Russ using our Verti-drain deep tine aerator on our greens. 3" spacing approximately 7-8" deep with 1/2" tines.

Staff using our new articulating blower and backpacks to move sand into the holes in the greens.

YOU TALKIN ABOUT PRACTICE

Pro shop purchased 8 new mats for long range wet, off season practice area. Our staff power washed the concrete, removed the old mats and installed the new mats. The mats accept a regular tee so you will not have to hit from the rubber tees. We are providing a rubber tee on the mat for anyone who does not want to tee as high as a standard tee. These will also be available for groups to hit from as well during our tournament season. I've included a video regarding the new mats as well as a discussion regarding when will be opening the grass tees. Probably will be at least a month or more. 

Thank you for being a part of this great club. We look forward to the upcoming season of golf here at Glen Echo. Remember you can follow regular daily updates on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook regarding the property we manage for you. I will give you as many details as you can stand.

 

The Future, The Past, The Present

 

This time of year brings about a time to be reflective on one's work and life. Immersed in the day to day grind of keeping the property at Glen Echo CC in the best possible shape during the main growing season, reflection gets put to the back burner until we get to the non growing months of winter. 

The Future

The past month or two I've reflected upon my career and the future here at Glen Echo. At the November Green Committee meeting I discussed with the committee a plan I envisioned for my future. Needless to say, these plans of course are at the discretion of my direct report General Manager Tim Grossman and the Board of Directors. Let's assume they continue to be for the most part pleased with me and our Grounds Department efforts. I discussed with the committee my desire to stay at Glen Echo until I reach full retirement. I enjoy the day to day grind of managing a course and everything that goes with it. I do not desire to find another type of green industry job selling or some other type of work. My intentions are to be at Glen Echo through the next three summers 2022, 2023, 2024 and then plan to retire by late fall/early winter of 2024 when my replacement has been chosen and is in place. Of course the particulars for this transition are a bit fuzzy but I believe a plan is important for all concerned.

In the meantime, we will put the pedal to the metal and continue at full speed. We have a great deal of  new projects that need to be accomplished to put the next Superintendent in position for success from an infrastructure standpoint.   

The Past

Since arriving at Glen Echo on August 18, 2008, there has been a tremendous amount of work completed on our beautiful property. From the first project documented, First Blog Post through 1146 posts later to this post. 

First and foremost, I wanted our membership to be the most informed and knowledgeable regarding what was taking place on their property. Ultimately the choice was theirs to read or not but I think I accomplished my goal in keeping our membership informed.

No doubt we've had some tough times on the business side but I take great pride in what work we have accomplished and the overwhelming support our department has received from our members and guests. Even during these most difficult times with the pandemic, a great future for our long standing club is happening as I type this message

The Present

There is a great deal of infrastructure work that is ongoing at Glen Echo. Old bones require rejuvenation and at times renovation. 

Probably most important is a Master Plan that is not Joe's plan but a plan that can be used as a guide for the future. A realistic document that prioritizes work, sets the financial requirements and lays out a plan for the future. This type of work does not come free and requires the input of a Course designer working in coordination with the grounds staff, Green Committee, Board of Directors and the Membership.

 From my perspective as course manager, there are key elements that should be a part of this discussion in no particular order of importance for this blog post; greens drainage, tee renovations, practice facilities, tree management plan, course drainage especially the 3, 4, 11, 12 ,13 corridor, lake dredging, maintenance facility renovations, bunker drainage and continued equipment replacement. Already a part of the discussion and in the plans are continued cart path renovations.

 On a personal note, I've joined a Weight Loss Challenge that came about on Twitter from a group of turf managers. We have some skin in the game but in the end for me its not about the cash. With my future lined out above, I need to make some physical changes for my current and future health. As you know I've been pretty active as a superintendent but the activity level can be affected by the dining table and some pretty horrible decisions being made in regards to what I put into my body..

I've decided to remove wheat from my diet which is a high impact on my current grazing habits. Of course with that comes the leaving behind of daily cookies, donuts, sandwiches, cakes, most pasta and pizza. I have medically controlled high blood pressure I've developed over the last few years and arthritis is beginning to say hello. My hope with increased exercise I can eliminate the high blood pressure and slow the effects that age and arthritis have on my body. My goal is to reach a weight of 170 pounds which I haven't seen  since 1999-2000. 

My Superintendent Challenge is for 8 and 12 weeks so hopefully the transition will happen throughout the winter and into the spring. The most important thing of course for me is to make this a permanent change in my life style.

Thanks for your time and I look forward to another year of making every attempt to kill as little grass as possible.  Happy New Year.

 

 

Aeration, Germination, Hibernation, Foundation

Its been a while since I've made a blog post. I'm making daily posts regarding course opening, carts and practice range restrictions or lack thereof on social media. Allow me a few moments to expand upon the work we have completed this fall so far and what there is to come.

We attempted to delay any aeration of main playing sources until we've gotten through most of our calendar of events in September and October. We began the aeration work around our greens using a 1/2" coring tine after slit seeding fescue around the greens to improve our coverage of turf grass. Our process included slit seeding, then aerating, spreading seed with a rotary spreader and then dragging in the material to make good soil contact and mowing. We should get seed germinating in the areas over the next couple of weeks and will then mature in the spring. We plan on using our rough aerator that makes a little bit larger hole a further out on the green surrounds over the next week or two which will improve its overall health as well.

We will begin to use our pull behind rough aerator in our rough soon as time and weather permits. Cores or plugs are pulled and we use a metal drag to break them up. This assists in reducing compaction and helps with stimulating new growth in our rough plants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4cVFB2DlRQ

Greens aeration will begin on Monday, November 1st. Depending upon conditions for the first day, it might take us a 2nd day or so to finish up the last few greens. We will use our deep tine verti-drain aerator and go about 7-8" deep. The holes will be filled with sand and surfaces brushed to smooth them

out.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ0xEew0b9I

Our warm season turf grass zoysia was fertilized with potassium in September to assist it with winter hardiness. It thickens the cell walls and improves water and energy uptake. As zoysia goes into dormancy, it is storing energy which assists it in fighting off excessive cold temperatures.

We applied fertilizer to our cool season rough grass in the past couple weeks which will assist in providing new energy for our turf. As temperatures begin to fall, it utilizes less energy and begins to store energy for the next season. Once cold temperatures arrive in late November and early December it goes into a form of dormancy even though it is fairly green. The stored energy then allows the plant to green up a little earlier than non-fertilized turf.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked our contracted tree expert Tim Gamma to come out on property and assist me in evaluating trees that have been damaged by the gall over the past year or two that should be removed. There are 35-40 trees that were identified for removal in which 21 are Pin Oaks. There are a few Ash, Siberian Elms and Maples in which some were damaged by this summer storms and or have been scheduled for removal over the past year which make up the total number of trees. Some of these trees will be removed completely by our staff but others will require assistance from our contractor. They will top them leaving a stub and we remove the large limbs that can't be chipped and the log. Our budget does not have the funds in it to remove all the trees. GM Tim Grossman and the Board are working through the finances to determine the number of trees we can remove with the available finances. 

We made our last mowing early last week on our zoysia tees, approaches and fairways. They might grow slightly over the next week or two and will then go into dormancy as our temperatures get cold enough for frost. We have also made our large patch zoysia fungicide application over the past few weeks to reduce the effects of the disease. The fall application of the fungicide assists in reducing the severity of the disease in the spring but we also must make another application in the spring to keep the disease under complete control.

Thanks again to the Foundation for the recognition of the work accomplished over the years here at Glen Echo by our staff.     

Part Deux, Puffy, and Overlayed

 As meteorological summer began in June, we thought we were in for a hot and dry summer. The end of June and into July brought copious amounts of rain.(As wise men once said it never rains in July). Along with the rain storms came tremendous damage to THEM things which created some issues for our staff but they stepped up and handled the situation as best could be expected.(As seen on Social Media I will not use the word Trees as I now refer to them as THEM. Its a coping mechanism so work with me here)

Well, Part Deux happened again last week but luckily to a smaller extent.We struggled a bit through some horrific weather last week but have made it through to the other end. We hope to have the rest of our mess cleaned up for the holiday weekend including getting some support posts put back up on the tennis courts to stop any further damage. The new wind screens are being removed for the season to reduce any further damage to the existing structure until we get it shored up and strengthened for next year.

 1 green after tree fell on irrigation system causing 2 heads to come on. I came back to turn off irrigation not knowing this had occurred. Happy I came back.

 Over the last few weeks, our greens have struggled from soft and puffy conditions. Temperatures have averaged more than 3 degrees above normal including that all important night lows which has not allowed recovery time of our turf. Consistent and regular rainfall on our greens which do not have drainage has led to soft surfaces and fat/lazy grass plants who do not like to give up additional ball roll out. We have been forced to not mow greens on a number of days because of the rain or damage which has occurred on the course. We have also had issues with scalping out in the middle of greens and over the top of our hole locations. We use a plate that we stand on which reduces the heaving of the greens as we pull out the 8" plug from the green but we continue to have issues. Also, with an inch or two of soil at the bottom of our hole this creates great suction when the greens are wet. We attempt to reduce this suction using various techniques but sometimes to no avail.

                              This has been experienced many times this summer at Glen Echo
 

 Heat and moisture leads to high microbial activity in our sub surface's and the release of additional nutrients for plants. We attempt to control this growth by the use of regulators but that has been very difficult for us to accomplish over the last few weeks. High heat shortens the window of the chemical's useful life and then chaos hits the course either in 1-2" rainfall and or high wind conditions and we've missed some of our windows for spraying. One of the chemicals is a product which has to dry on the greens and the other must be watered in which also creates its own set of issues. When you are already wet do you add more moisture and possibly make your greens sick just to control growth. Sometimes you just have to do nothing until the environmental conditions change. We anticipate with cooler weather the next 7 days to get back on track with sand topdressing, brushing mowing and rolling. 

 

We are looking forward to more of this!

  We had hoped to have some cart paths back filled with soil and sod added in the worst areas between 1 tee and 4 but have not been able to accomplish this to date. We hope to begin this process as time allows. To a man and women, we are much appreciate of the effort to clean up our cart paths. You can do all you can to have great turf but having your equipment banged around with heights of cut set at thousandths of an inch can lead to issues on our best surfaces. I see staff members driving down the middle of a fairway to avoid the rough nature of our paths. Some have mentioned, why not concrete? Well, if we had a choice of course we would go with concrete but the cost is astronomical in comparison. Our local superintendent has a text thread where we throw out questions or look for guidance. Been told by a reliable source that has been doing concrete over the years that replacement of asphalt and going to concrete would be easily into 7 figures. I would like to have the most modern bent grass on our greens and complete drainage in each green but it can't happen right now. 

                                                                 The old and the updated!

From November through March, we have a tendency to have some large equipment on our paths.Our dump truck is 7'10" wide. An 8' cart path leaves you no room for error. An 8'4" cart path basically the same but does give you just a little wiggle room. Our backhoe is over 7' wide and our lift is nearly 8' wide and heavy. We work in the winter during freeze and thaw conditions which is the norm around St. Louis since we don't stay nearly as cold. As we are driving on our existing roadways you literally see them flex up and down.creating more path repair work the next season. Kind of makes you sick to your stomach knowing to accomplish your work you have to tear up something and create more work. Over laying these paths will help to strengthen our existing surfaces and allow us the time to continue to improve our facilities to the best we can make them.

We of course focus our efforts on our daily work but our biggest event of the season if coming up rather quickly. The Invitational 2021 opening round is about 403 hours away. I anticipate you will see some ever changing conditions over the next 16 odd days. I hope you have pleasant day.

 

Cart Path Update

 Good progress on the cart path overlay today at Glen Echo.

The clubhouse circle was completed this morning and the operation was moved to the area of 3 tee and our contractor brought us to within about 200 yards from the first tee.

Thursday play will begin from the 10th tee to allow us some extra time to get through #1 tee. We will be asking members to go through the maintenance area to get to the driving range since we will be stacked with trucks along 1 and into the range area. Our road begins at the guard rail near the cart garage. We will then complete the long range road and parking area and then move out to #3. I anticipate 4 tee to the field bar road behind 7 green off of #4 completed on Friday.

The asphalt that is currently laid is ready to be driven upon. Once the asphalt is rolled a few times it will be ready to drive upon. In the meantime, if you are out on Thursday or Friday, we will provide some guidance in the area that we are working. I Thanks for your patience as we work through this project.

Areas ground on parking lot as contractor prepared to fill with new asphalt.

Rolling the newly patched area.

Laying asphalt in clubhouse circle.

Rolling the area smooth.

                                       Contractor using a paving machine to lay the asphalt. Staff firming up

                                        sides and smoothing out imperfections.

Steamy hot.

                   

Finished product after rolling from 2 tee to 1 green.

From 2 tee onward and up!

Asphalt on the high side of 1 will need some back bill and sod.

Area near the upside but on the low side with the same issue. Soil and sod to smooth out.

 This will prevent damage to equipment and reduce hazardous situations for carts and our members operating them. 

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.

Instagram joewachter

Twitter jdwachter  Joe Wachter

Facebook  joewachter4

 

Spread It, Vertical It, Trim It, Fill It and Please DON'T Step Through It

 What a rollercoaster its been over the last few weeks with our work here at Glen Echo. This week we're reaching the peak and heading down the biggest drop. All of our grounds responsibilities are coming together to start all at once but our staff along with some pretty good weather I must say are knocking it out of the park with a couple twisty loops in between.

SPREAD IT

The pandemic has created some shipping issues with parts in repairing some of our needed pieces of equipment. Our spreader is down and with the onset of warmer weather our zoysia is hungry and ready to move a bit so we borrowed a spreader from the best Super I know, my brother and spread a couple tons on our fairways over the past couple of days. Little more spreading to do as well with a little nitrogen to go into the roughs to push a little energy into them for the summer stress period. Oh what a challenge it will be playing from it over the next few weeks! Hit em straight.

https://youtu.be/pXnd4mWMpLg

VERTICAL IT

Did a little vertical mowing on our greens the last couple of days. Its normally completed a little earlier in the season but timing has not been where I wanted.  You say vertical, what do you mean? Well, allow me a moment to explain. Greens mowers have a piece of metal that stretches across the ground and stands the turf up and the blades then come through and cut it off. We are talking about a setting of about 1/8" maximum which is about 30 sheets of typing paper. Pretty thin. Below are pictures of a normal mowing reel and a vertical mowing reel.

Regular mower with a straight bar across the bottom that stands the blades up and anything above the top of the bar gets cut by the spinning blade.

The vertical mower cuts down into the surface of the green. 37 blades across 20" spaced at about 5/8" apart. Its purpose is to cut any bent grass in its line that have bent over and grown laterally which is its nature.

Our vertical mowing only goes about 3/8" deep helps to manage the bent grass in the manner that I anticipate. We went front to back on Tuesday and today we went the opposite direction and made what appears to be a checker board pattern across the greens to insure we could cut many of the longest blades. Tuesday we did a light sand topdressing behind the vertical mower than brushed and mowed. Today we only brushed behind the vertical cut and mowed. The disruption of the surface lasts a few days but I would anticipate by this weekend the greens should be at their normal roll out.

https://studio.youtube.com/video/eIUkyFNgzjw/edit

  The arrow on the left is pointing to the shorter lime green poa annua.We have reduced its competitiveness with a growth regulator called Paclobutrazol in an effort to encourage the bent grass to out grow it. The arrow on the right/middle is pointing to bent grass plants which if you look at the length of their overall leaves are 3 to 4 times longer than the poa and much wider blades as well. We don't vertical very often because it can reduce the competitive advantage bent grass has over poa but a cut like this can stimulate growth of the bent and force it to push out more leaves from the crown(growth center of the plant). Ultimately it improves ball roll out for future rounds of golf. Now you can go to a depth of an inch or more but that's usually done much earlier in the season to allow for proper healing. Scheduling had not allowed us to get this process completed in the last few weeks but the timing of the cool down over the next few days works perfectly for this cultural practice. 

 

TRIMMING IT

The staff have been hitting the property with trimmers attempting to get all trees, fence lines and other structures trimmed up over the last couple of weeks. They are weekly trimming and hover mowing our bunker banks which is usually a 6-7 hour job for 3-4 people. Once the heat of summer arrives, there is a bit less growth which saves some time. 

FILL IT

Our grounds detail work as we've mentioned in the past are our tennis courts and pool. Continued clean up including painting the asphalt  area and getting the shade structure painted and cleaned. Cleaning  stored away furniture and existing furniture that overwintered at the pool. Becky's been hard at work getting the urns filled and the giant hanging baskets placed at the pool. Touch up painting of the pergola and attaching the sunshade to its roof all in a days work for our staff. 

 We removed some hanging baskets from the Pro Shop front area and have added some new baskets to the Field Bar. Becky planted those last week with Caladium, Sun Patiens, Asprargus Fern and Coleus. Six in total. Should be a good look this season.

 

Please DON'T STEP ON IT

Speaking of Becky and the work she does comes the last but not least of our blog. We have a couple of ornamental plantings that are in some high traffic areas, especially around the pro shop. They were put in place over the years to give a great back drop to our closing hole and to give cart and walking traffic a defined area to walk and or drive around. Last weekend, I happened to be up around the pro shop and saw with my very own eyes people walking directly through the bed area. 

Our walk on and walk off area at the practice green was an embarrassment for me and we have made great strides in improving this area. We improved the soil structure and increased the irrigation to small directed heads for this walk off area. We also placed stakes and roping that can be moved to spread the wear and tear. Every foot print through the ornamental bed compacts the area and does not allow water to penetrate properly and damages plants. We appreciate you walking a few extra feet to protect the work our staff has spent many hours completing.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for your time and hopefully you get out and see  us over the next few days.