What do y'all do in the winter?

 Hello to everyone and welcome to the beginning of the 2021 golf season at Staley Farms.  I hope the holidays were kind to everybody as they were to my family and I.  This was the year that my just turned 4 year old was 100% all in on Christmas and Santa so no boredom was found at my house.  As far as our team here at work, we have all been able get back to the grindstone in January after some vacationing and some covid protocols through December.  I'm pretty sure that every Superintendent in history has to answer this question every fall.  "So what do you all do in the winter?"  My answer, "A lot!"  This blog entry will touch on our team's efforts this winter and what I hope to accomplish by mid March.

Fairway Drainage:

    We have completed the planned drainage for #5 fairway and are halfway done with #1.  It is going fairly well and I believe this will improve these areas greatly.  As long as we can get to 14 and 16 fairways this go-around I will be satisfied until next year.  16 is going to be quite a project!  Also, just so I am 100 % transparent, these areas will more than likely struggle through the hottest part of the season for another year or so due to the fact that poa annua has filled in these areas after the bent lost the fight.  If you look at these trough areas you will notice the grass there is much more of a neon green versus the bent in the rest of the fairway.  Thats the poa.  It is a very shallow rooted grass which is why it struggles through hot and dry weather.  It will be just fine through the spring and early summer, but if it turns hot and humid then it will start to decline.  I have bent seed in the shop now for these areas and the poor areas on tee tops and we will be going out with it in March sometime.  This will give us some good time for it to germinate and grow a little before we go out with our pre-emergent application in May.  

Tree Work:

    Back in November we were able to attack the thicket to the left of #11 green in hopes of gaining some sunlight for the bank area.  I believe that we were successful without clearing too much.  We knocked the scrub back about 15 feet, took out a handful of trees, and limbed up the remaining trees.  Once the trees leaf out I think the power lines will still be hidden, but the eastern sky will be much more open.  We will re-seed that bank again in the spring along with some pretty strong fertilizer inputs.  After #11 we moved to the heavily wooded area to the right of 15 fairway which also backs up to 16 tees.  Before the holidays, I cleared out most of the underbrush and fallen dead wood for the first step.  I have only just begun removing standing dead trees as well as small trees that will never prosper sitting under the canopy of the larger trees.  Once finished here, both tees on #16 will receive A Lot more sun and air movement which will help them fight against soggy conditions and the brown patch that comes along with that.  

    The next step of tree work that we have accomplished was the rental of a large 46 foot boom lift so that I could get up into some trees around the course and do some good pruning.  I absolutely hate heights, but for some reason get a real kick out of boom pruning.  Now I apologize if I didn't get to a certain limb that you have been cussing for 5 years, but I tried to concentrate on trees that affected sunlight and air to greens and tees.  Also the machine is incredibly slow and difficult to maneuver so my traveling path had to be taken into consideration as well.  I also couldn't drive over any bridges because I have no idea of their weight tolerance.  If you haven't played in the last couple weeks then you haven't seen my path of destruction.  I was able to get to the following areas: 1 tees, 1 green, 3 green, a couple trees along the left native on #4, #8 tees, #9 tees, #15 bridge, #16 tee, right side of #16 rough, the one tree in the left rough of #16 (won the prize for most improved), and the tree directly to the right of 17 green.  We are in the process of picking up all the limbs, but this will take a while.  I had a few comments about taking the lift out to 13 to trim up some limbs in the bunch in the middle of the fairway.  It would have taken me about an hour just to drive it out there, plus I will be able to do all of the needed trimming from the ground in that area.  It is my plan to rent this machine at least once a year to continue the pruning process through the entire course.  After the limbs get picked up and hauled away we will move our sights to cutting down and trimming trees in some select native areas.  To the right of 1 has a lot of simple little trees to remove, all of the ugly willows to the right of 5, the locust trees to the right of 10, and a couple dead ones in the native on 18 to name a few.  I will also be taking down 2 trees that are creating the tunnel shot from the blue tees on 12.  So it seems that February will be pretty busy for us.  Thank goodness we are getting real close to finishing cleaning and prepping our course amenities in the shop.  

Anybody missing their 10 year old Top Flite?

Course Amenities:

    In between drainage and tree work, we have been pretty busy inside the shop as well.  Busier than I anticipated.  We brought in the water cooler stands to make repairs to the roofs, but turns out a lot of the side boards were pretty rotten when we started removing the trim.  Then my perfectionism kicked in and I thought then needed to be squared up a bit.  In the end I was just staring at the studs. 

I guess we just rebuild them.

So we have rebuilt them from the ground up.  We stained and sealed both sides of every board so they will defend against the weather better.  We added some lumber to the corners for stability, re-configured the trim, and went with shingles instead of tongue-in-groove.  We have also changed the color scheme to match the traffic stakes we built last year.  Unfortunately my eyes have a very irritated reaction to the new color scheme.  They seem very Mizzouish.

Grant sure gets a kick out of them though.  Maybe I can round up some of the cornhuskers around here to help me get some red placed somewhere?  The pieces at the bottom are just for transporting them and will be removed when placed on the course.  Now we just need to hope that we can put water jugs in them at some point this year or they will just be some fancy trash can holders.  We will also be putting together a smaller version to house the towel wetting jug that sits by the cart staging area.  The guys have begun sanding down all the traffic stakes for a fresh coat of stain and we will be making more in the month of February.  

    

Well there is our mid-winter update and I should have another around the beginning of March.  At that point i'll get back to my monthly schedule.  Lets hope for some mild weather in February and a good start to the golfing season.  Go Chiefs and I'll see you all out on the course.