Guest Appearance on the blog

As the greenhouse was being built, I asked Chef Rob if there was anything that we might be able to grow for him that he might regularly use or would like to try. He uses a wide variety of fresh herbs which he has grown in pots outside the kitchen compound area for years. We will start some herbs in the greenhouse which will be ready for his use in a few weeks for him to use in his magical dishes. He also stated that he would like to start some broccoli sprouts and some baby lettuce which he can use as garnishes.

Below are packets of broccoli and baby lettuce which were sown last Friday. By Monday morning we had germination.














I brought the tray up to Chef Rob and Terry today to see what they thought. He was so excited that he decided to use the broccoli spouts which are on the left to garnish the salads for the Ladies Opening Luncheon which was today.














Chef Rob placing 3 or 4 broccoli sprouts on top of the salad.














The finished product below on top of a baby beet.

We've had some additional discussions regarding other products which we might grow for your enjoyment. Throughout this season, I'm sure Chef Rob and the staff will let you know when you are partaking in something that was grown at Glen Echo. Chef Rob will be making a full post one of these days so if you love food as I do, I'm sure you will want to keep checking the blog for the return of our chef!

Aerate bentgrass approaches

I'm sorry to be a bit behind in posting.

Last week we aerated our bentgrass approaches. We first used our verticuter units which attach to a tri-plex(3 wheeled) mower which we use on tee and greens. The purpose of the verticutting unit is to cut down into the upper canopy of the turf(thatch) and help remove some of the spongy material that builds up in this area. Thatch consists of living and dead root and leaf tissue. The bentgrass by its very nature would like to lay or bend over to the side so we have to encourage it to stand up straight. The verticutting lines were then filled with sand which is explained later in this post. We used our Verti-Drain deep tined aerator with a 1/2" coring tine and pulled cores. Russ is operating our largest tractor which must be used to handle this unit. 16 approach is not the easiest place for this type of work.

Skip is picking up the cores with a snow shovel.

Once the cores were picked up, the crew applied a heavy layer of sand to topdress the approaches. The sand was brushed in the holes with brooms. The brushing action also helped the turf stand straight up which allowed for a tight cut by our walking approach mower. As a topdressing, the sand also was worked into the grooves left by the verticutting unit and will help in smoothing the approaches.

Our overall goal for this work is to improve the health of the approaches so they may survive the wear and tear from equipment, play, and the stress of our summer weather. We also want to improve the firmness of the approaches so a ball will have a better opportunity to release toward the green and the hole instead of hitting softly and stopping.

Day to Day Duties

Some normal happenings going on this week at Glen Echo. We brought one additional crew member back this week and will begin to increase our staffing over the next couple of weeks.

I'm still fooling with the format of this blog. I appreciate your patience in case something is not quite in alignment. Photographic memory is not a part of my repertoire. I have to practice a few times before perfection can take its proper place.

Some areas of our greens did not get the holes filled all the way to the top as we normally do when we aerated our greens last week. All of our staff members worked this week at adding some additional sand to a number of greens to insure that a majority of the holes were filled to the top. We will be doing some additional lighter topdressings in the next week in an effort to improve ball roll and smoothness.

The picture below is a part of the sanding process that took place. We used our standard topdresser to place the material on the green. In this case, 14 green was in need of more sand-than I would have liked to have seen. The guys are using back pack blowers to help with blowing the sand in the holes as well as brooms. Greens were rolled and were then cut the next day.

The never ending work of tree litter pickup underneath our trees at Glen Echo. We continue to work on picking up the Sweet Gum balls as well. We need to hurry with this work because the grass is beginning to grow and we will have to be cutting on a regular basis in the not too distant future.














Assistant Mike spraying greens on Thursday with a micro-nutrient application and a soil
building product called Humega. http://biofloraag.com/Organic/humega.htm
Interesting bit of trivia, Eddie Albert of Green Acres fame was a front man for this company when I first got in the business in 1990.

Assistant Skip is putting a nice clean up mow on the zoysia tees. They are slowing beginning

to green up but are not growing as of yet. Our efforts were to help in cleaning up the surface and to cut off some of the dormant material. We are going to cut our tees at .5 inches this season instead of .55. Not a great deal of difference but I think the cut will be improved. We might raise the height slightly during the worst part of the summer to help the cool season tees survive the heat.

Assistant Mike using the vibratory roller on the 1st blue tee which we aerified at the same time as the greens. The aeration created some undulations and heaving of the turf's surface. The roller assisted in smoothing the surface of the tee.

Our babies continue to grow in the green house. Our impatiens started with about 3-4 leaves and now have more than 10 leaves per plant. A couple fatalities from time to time but all are doing pretty well. The tropicals are not liking these cooler nights. The hole in the wall on the left side of the picture is going to be where our heat duct from the building heating system is installed. My younger brother is a sheet metal worker and is going to fabricate the work for me. Space heaters are taking care of the heat for now.

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.

Greenhouse Completion and Babies Growing

Well, I'm typing this very early on Sunday morning. Winter has descended upon STL again. I looked at my alarm this morning and it was flashing so when I looked outside and saw the heavy snow, I just wanted to make sure that all was well with my newly planted 5500 baby plants growing in our greenhouse. Here is a rundown of how our plants and greenhouse are coming along.

Plants are placed in either 1801's on the left(18 individual 3" pots) or 606's (6 plants per section with 6 sections per tray-36 plants per tray)

That is a 450 tray on the left of Red Salvia.(450 red salvia plants in one tray) I normally do not grow material from this size but I was late in the process this season of ordering in our material. The price is less to purchase large quantities of material but of course you have a bit more growing to do with smaller sized plants. Those plants are rather difficult to get out of their holder without damaging them so I took a punch from Harry and pushed the plants out of their holder. You would then simply form a hole with your finger and press the plants into place. They would be lightly watered and would be put on pallets in the shop for a few days until our house was completed.

Above are some of the early plants which were potted and freshly watered.

A few days after our plants came in, here they are lined up on pallets on our shop floor waiting for the completion of the greenhouse. You can see our work station to the left. Table which is where we planted the material. Bales of potting material and boxes of trays and containers.

A view from the doorway of the greenhouse where you can see the three rows of plant material growing. Our tables are pretty full as you can see. We have 3 more plant varieties coming in which are going to be utilized for some of our planting urns. We have some large quantities of some standard annuals such as celosia, impatiens, blue and red salvia, ageratum and melapodium in which some will be utilized on property but will be available for sale. Sweet potatoe vines of both colors, shrimp plant, mexican petunia, angle wing begonia, pentas, large copper plant, sun coleus, mexican heather, angelonia, persian shield, silver shield plectranthus, supertunia, calibrachoa, and bacopa which should look great on property this season and will be available for sale.

Greens Aeration

Our greens were aerfied with the Verti-drain deep tined aerifier. We used a 1/2" coring tine(pulled plug of soil and sand out of the green) set to a depth of 6" which is about 2-3" deeper than a normal walking aerator is able to pull a core. This depth insured that we were able to get down into the soil layer of the greens which varies from 3-5" deep from green to green.















Russ is operating the aerifier with our large Kubota Tractor. We operate in the lowest gear at the slowest speed so we can get closer spacing between holes. We are in the area of a 3" spacing between holes.

The rear view of the operation.




















The completed practice green covered in sand, soil and cores.













Harry(our mechanic) and Assistant Skip operating the core harvester. The small plows direct the cores and sand into the shoot which lifts and shoots the material into the bed of the 3 wheeled truckster. Depending upon the size of the green, the bed of the cart usually fills completely and it is then dumped in an out of the way area on the property to help speed up the operation.















Assistant Skip is spreading the material out in the back of the cushman as it comes out of the machine.















This is the view from behind the core harvesting operation.
















Here is the view after the harvesting operation was completed. My camera case is about 4" long so you can see that we are around 3" between rows and about 2" between each tine.

I did not get a picture of our topdressing work in which Assistant Mike was performing the work for the day. This was completed using our standard topdresser. We decided to use the spinners design which throws sand out a few feet on either side of the machine. This helps with reducing traffic on the soft greens. A normal green would take 4-5 passes of the machine to get enough sand on the green. He would usually have to refill his hopper before covering the complete green surface. We used approximately 40 tons of sand material on our greens. Just before the sanding operation, we placed a micro-nutrient product onto the greens with a broadcast spreader at the rate of 25#'s per thousand square feet. It is important for this material to get into the profile of the green where it provides assistance to the turf as it grows.
















When the topdressing is complete, we then blow the sand back and forth across the green to fill the holes as full as possible. There are a couple of greens that need some supplemental hole filling in the next few days. We try to fill the holes with sand so that we can incorporate a larger particle sized sand into the subsurface of the green to assist in oxygen exchange, root growth and drainage.

The sand material that was used routinely in St. Louis for years was a fine sand which would make for some pretty smooth greens but was less than desirable in the above mentioned areas. I have a great picture below which will show what we are attempting to do in our green profile.

Once the sand was blown into as many holes as possible, we would then bring a drag brush out and would go circles around the green help in dispering more sand. Once that process was completed, we would then mow the green without baskets because the green mower would pick up more sand than grass. This could negatively affect the operation of the mowing unit and could lead to potential scalping because of the weight of the sand. The operator would need a mask and definetly would need protective eye wear.

This view is looking down into a normal sized golf hole without the hole cup being in place.
You can see the sand layer going down into the profile about 3-4". Below the sand layer is a transitional line between the lighter colored sand and the darker soil layer. Within that soil layer, there are veins of sand which going down into that profile all the way to the bottom of the hole. This is our goal during the aeration process. We are attempting to place as much sandy material into that area as possible. The deepest veins are ususally completed with the verti-drain and our solid tine operation

Tee Renovation

A great deal progress has been made this past week with our tee renovation work.

Our laser level contractor was able to come out on Monday afternoon till and laser both tees on #10 and the 7th blue tee in a couple of hours.

Before his work began, the guys had to remove the sod from 7 tee and do some additional work in preparation for the leveling operation.

As you can see, the sod was removed and laid off to the side of the tee. Tom is cleaning some edges and Jason is using our lightweight tiller to break up the surface. Lady is doing her usual job of supervision.

Jason continuing to till and Tom clearing out an edge for the sod.

Yes, Jason is still tilling. A small unit and three shots taken pretty close to one another. We formed a straight line down the right side of the tee to help staff with tee placement and we cut out a couple of more yards of turf to give a far right tee placement. We will have to prune a couple of limbs off of the oak in the right foreground.

Tom is clearing out the entrance to the tee. He is trying to soften the entrance to make it easier to enter the tee and help the sod survive the foot traffic. There is a large amount of water that comes from the yard behind the tee which runs down the walk path creating ruts and washes our mulch down the hill. We need to install a drain before the tee opens to help reduce the amount of water that is on the surface causing this damage.

The guys located a quick coupler which had been overgrown with zoysia/bermuda in the foreground which we can hook up a hose to help with any localized dry areas on the tee. The sprinkler head in the background is used to water the tee below but is not level. The staff dug up the head and leveled it. This should help provide better coverage on the tee and help reduce the amount of water that had been landing on the rear section of the 7th white tee.

Schaeffer Meyer personnel using a tractor roto-tiller to loosen the top surface of the tee before leveling.

Another view of the tilling unit at work.

The picture above shows the laser leveling operation in action. The right side of the picture is the tri-pod holding the two plane leveling unit. Jerry Meyer sets the percentage slope from side to side and forward to backward. This is usually set at about 1%. For example; A 1% fall in a 100' tee would be 1'. This tee is only 25' square so the slope is only 2.5". Normally tees are leveled front to back and usually away from the walk on and off area so members are not walking through the area where the tee is draining. This tee was set to drain to the left and sloped slightly from back to front. Golf course architecture suggests that tees built on a downhill slope should be built with a slight downhill grade.

There are 5 pieces of equipment involved in the laser operation. The laser on the tri-pod which sends out the signal. A receiver that attaches on a pole to the box blade. This receiver has an up and down arrow and a even line which tells the operator sitting on the tractor how close to grade the tee is becoming as he moves around the surface. There is a unit sitting by the operator which allows for manual overriding of the system and an electrical sensor unit that attaches to the tractor's hydraulic system. This unit raises and lowers the box blade based upon the information that Jerry placed in the laser unit. As the tractor continues to go around in circles, the box blade unit will continue to cut and fill until the surface has met the percentages in slope that have been requested.

The leveling box blade in action.

Jerry is beginning to do his work on the 7th tee box.

Mike and Jason running wire to the newly trenched head at the front corner of #10 white tee. The head was originally two foot higher at the front left corner of the tie wall.

Lady is in charge again. Now some might say is that all she does. She can't lay sod so I guess in the end that is all she does when we are stopped at a project. The last few days, she has taken some side trips down to the lakes to chase a few noisy geese. Tom, Jason and Russell laying the zoysia on the new forward #10 blue tee. I'm sorry for not having finished pictures of the laser leveled tee. I thought I had taken some but must have gotten out of sequence with all the work that was taking place.

A view at the new tee in front of the existing #10 blue tee. The sod on the surround of the tee is fescue that is just coming out of dormancy. It is grown out in the O'Fallon, Missouri area which has had more frost and cooler temperatures than Glen Echo at this time of year.

Looking from above the same tee.

We still have some sod to lay on the both the tee surface and the surround to the #10 white tee.

I hope to have pictures of the 7th and 10th white tee in the next few days.