WINTER PREPARATION

One of the things that Superintendents do behind the scenes is our winter preparation.  Our changing seasons in Kansas City bring many challenges to golf course managers.

IRRIGATION PREPARATION
One of the things that we have to pay close attention to is our irrigation systems.  We have approximately 1500 sprinkler heads tied together with approximately 40 miles of irrigation pipe ranging from 12" mainlines to 2" lateral loops.  These lines can freeze and break if we don't prepare them correctly.  At Staley we choose to drain our irrigation system instead of blowing it out with forced air.  We use many criteria to determine weather our system is a candidate for draining verses blowing it out with compressed air.  I evaluated the system and looked at the presence of drain valves in many of our low areas that enable us to open the drains and drain a fair majority of the water out of the pipes.  Forced air puts some fatigue on the irrigation system and I try to drain if I can to avoid the adverse effects of forced air hammering pipes as we blow out.  Draining also allows us to quickly charge the system back up in the winter months to water turf if we need to.  With 50 acres of Bentgrass we are susceptible to winter burn and desiccation that injures our sensitive Bentgrass.

CLUBHOUSE PREPARATION
Many of you that have been members at Staley Farms for a few years know that we have had some issues with winter pipe freezing at the clubhouse.  We have worked diligently to overcome this problem.  We spent all day at the clubhouse the week before the winter cold arrived draining lines and we are confident that we have our waterlines prepared for the winter.  We invited Doug Mason with Absolute Fire to help us prepare the fire system for the winter cold.  Doug installed an antifreeze loop in our banquet room and is going to add some drainage loops in our bar area that will ensure many years of trouble free winters at Staley Farms.  We are excited to get these alterations completed so we can sleep better at night knowing our beautiful clubhouse is safe from pipe freezing and winter breakage while offering excellent fire protection.

TURF PREPARATION
We obviously completed our greens aeration earlier this fall.  That is a very important fall cultural practice that we do to ensure proper drainage, compaction relief, and soil preparation for next season.  We fertilized greens three times after aeration to help the greens heal from aeration.  Fall fertilization also feeds the grass plant when it is preparing for winter.  The grass plant stores carbohydrates in the root system this time of year.  Proper fertilization this time of year ensures a good spring green-up and a healthy start to 2015.  We also fertilized the fairways, tees, and roughs this month.  We will top-dress the greens when the weather warms up a little bit.  We use strait sand and this will protect the greens from winter desiccation and wind burn.

MOWING NATIVES
It is our goal to mow all of the native areas before the snow falls.  Snow will mat these areas down and not allow us to get the proper cut that we want.  Winter snuck up on us but we think we hope we will still get a few good weeks to mow the remaining native areas.  This is a critical component to keeping our natives as clean as possible.  This helps cut down on the volunteer trees and unwanted weeds that grow in our natural areas.  We will treat this spring with a two herbicides to prepare these areas for the 2015 golf season.