Fall greens aeration

Our greens were aerified on Monday, October 12th. We used our Verti-drain deep tined aerifier with a 1/2" solid tine going 7-8" deep and spaced about 3" a part.

The pictures below are of our verti-drain aerifier in operation. We start at the back of the green and go through the front collar and or bentgrass approach. The operator, in this case Russ will then back over the non-aerated section of green and will start another row.

Below is the back view of our aerator with 4 tines per holder and 6 arms.


This view is the aftermath of the aerating process. The pin below gives you an idea of the spacing that the aerator makes in the surface of a green.


Once we aerated, we would then roll the greens to smooth the aerated surface in case the machine would heave the turf. Skip is rolling the green with our vibratory rollers in the picture below.

We then used our spin topdressor to place a complete hopper of sand on each green. During the season, we would put one load of sand on about every 3-4 greens in our frequent and light program. It is necessary a couple of times of year to place heavy amounts of sand on greens to help smooth the surface, fill aeration holes and increase the percentage of sand in the turf profile to help dilute our turf mat. The turf mat or thatch includes the turf surface and an inch or two of the living and dying stems and roots of a plant. Sand being continually layered into this living and dying process will not only help turf conditions on the surface but improve the environment for our microbial population to flourish in the soil. Microbes that are healthy and happy will help to reduce thatch materials and will gather nutrients as they pass through this area. As the microbes digest these materials, the turfgrass root system will absorb the byproducts of the microbes feast and turn it into energy for health and welfare. Too much thatch leads to greens that are spongy during wet conditions, excessively ball mark, and will not be smooth or roll true. The excessive thatch will hold moisture and tie up nutrients and will not allow the water to drain quickly through the profile. Of course, old soil greens with only a few inches of sand help to slow the moisture leaving the turf area as well.
Once the green is topdressed, we would use our drag brush and would go at least 3 different directions(front to back, side to side and 45 degree) on the green to smooth the sand and help move it into the aeration holes. The dragging will also help work the sand around the turf which forces the turf to stand up which would then allow for a tighter mowing of our greens surfaces. Less leaf blades means less friction and better ball roll. Assistant Mike is doing our dragging in the picture below.Once the sand was moved around on the green with the brush, the green is mowed.
Jason is doing the honors below. You can see the cloud of dust and sand out in front of the machine as he moves along the turf surface. We could substitute a second roll for this process but this insures that any turf that has been pulled up in the process from the brushing is cut off.

The greens were then lightly fertilized and watered to help settle the sand and begin to activate the fertilizer.

Even with cooler than normal temperatures, I expect the greens to be back in good condition by next week. The heavy sanding requires that we mow the greens once they have dried late in the morning for the first few days after this process and we should be mowing greens in the morning by this weekend.

New Green Surround Sod, 10 and 13

We spent Monday stripping the warm season sod from the first cut on green surrounds of #10 and #13. In the picture below, you can see Russell using the sod cutter to strip off the material.

In this part of #13, Jose, Teddy, Arturo and Gionni are removing the sod by hand because our equipment is too large to fit in this area.

In our large sections of the surrounds, we moved the material from the edges so that we could push the material into our front loader.

Skip is pushing the material into piles.

Skip backing the tractor and box blade pushing the material into the front loader.

Front loader dumping the material into our dump truck.

Once the area was cleared, we had to dig up 16 of our sprinkler heads around our greens and raise them so that they will be even with the new sod.

Skip is rolling the 30 yard big roll of sod out onto #13. Nick is removing the netting that the material is rolled up to help keep it stable. We remove the netting so that it does not get caught on spikes in case the sod would become weak in spots and die. Once the sod is rolled out, we have to pull it into place to fit the area we are trying to cover. In the case of the green surrounds, we had a curved edge to work with which creates its own set of difficulties.

Arturo is filling in the gaps of sod.

Russell is filling in areas as well.

#10 Complete. We replaced about 10-12' around 10 green.

#13 Complete. We still have a little dirt to fill out some heads on 13 green.

Fairway/rough bermuda eradication

In the last couple of weeks, we have made our last application of the bermuda eradication chemicals for the 2009 season. We have made our 5th application over 2 seasons on fairways 4, 7, 8, and 13. We also included our first cut of regular rough around all fairways and made applications to various tees to reduce the bermuda encroachment as well.(4/12, 6, 9, 11 blue, 13, 16, 17 and 18)

The green committee has been in discussions regarding additional applications to other fairways. Our concerns as a group are that the longer we wait to spray more fairways, the more severe the encroachment of the bermuda into our zoysia. Early this week, we made applications in spots on fairways 1-3, 10, 12, 15-18. These spots are smaller than the spot applications you will see in the pictures below from hole #13. We sprayed those areas at a reduced speed so that we would impact less zoysia turf. I also picked these spots because of the amount of zoysia turf in the spots which will help us with recovery of these areas. The spots will probably become visible to you in the next 5-7 days. The affects this season will probably be like the turf is going into dormancy which it is getting This application will probably not take out the bermuda but will reduce its vitality for next spring so that our zoysia will begin to move into some of these areas. We will also sod as needed in more severely affected areas. Additional applications will be made next season.

The picture below is of hole #13 with the application made about 10 days ago. The application was not made in total in the fairway but was spot sprayed to reduce the effects of the chemical on the non-bermuda areas of zoysia. Zoysia is tolerant to the chemical which means it will not be killed by the products but will yellow and will not be as vigorous during the first couple of weeks of application. We also sprayed the rough on the left side all the way to the cart path and on the right side about 30'. You can see some slight discoloration in these areas. Most areas of our first cut of rough were sprayed from cart path to about 30-40' on the opposite side of the fairway.

The next picture is from September 2008. During this application, we sprayed the entire fairway and the rough was sprayed with one of the two chemicals we were using. This application was made a couple of weeks earlier than the 2009 application which is why the rough is slightly more off color in last year's picture. We have made 3 applications on the rough on #13 and I believe we are beginning to make some very significant impact to this area. This view below is looking down 13 fairway and demonstrates the the effects that the material has on the zoysia and the bermuda. The zoysia turns off color/yellow and the bermuda turns red. As we continue to reduce the size of our bermuda contamination, the squares will be significantly reduced and our zoysia will fill in the voids left by the bermuda turf. The darker green turf in the fairway is where we did not spray the chemical mixture.

The picture below is from the most recent spray in 2009 on #13. You can see that the bermuda is very thin and soil is becoming exposed in the right side of the picture. The next picture is from September 2008 and you can see how strong the bermuda turf is and that there is no soil visible in this picture. Our applications are working and we are making progress as we attempt to push the bermuda out of our main play areas.

The last picture is between the forward tee on #11 and the fairway. The ride side of the picture is where we sprayed our bermuda eradication materials and to the left is rough that was not sprayed. We made two passes with our spray rig which covered 40'. We are seeding into these areas about 20' off of the fairways. As we continue to reduce the bermuda population, we will

expand the area of seeding over the next few years.

End of summer blooms

With the end of summer come the loss of our summer blooms. A final look at some of the colorful blooms of the season.

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.