STRESS!

I have finally returned to write our next blog after over a month of hot and humid, bentgrass hating weather.  The month of June fit perfectly with the rest of 2020, meaning it was a complete mess.  Now before I get into the junk that circles inside my head all day, I want to say that I am pleased with the way the golf course is looking and performing.  Unfortunately, its not every day that I am able get the golfer's overview of the course with a calm head to see the beauty.  Mechanical breakdowns, heat stress, disease, and our new dirt moving neighbors on the back nine have been keeping me occupied lately. 
So..... I literally just went back out to the course for our evening shift after Stampede round 1 and I found the calm beauty I mentioned in the previous sentence.  It was a very welcome sight and brought my sanity level back up a bit. 

So as I am typing this, the day is July 10th.  As far as the weather goes, I feel like we have been through 3 Julys already.  With the heat and humidity starting clear back at the beginning of June, we started seeing fairway stress spots a full month before we did last year.  Also we had a week long stretch of 90 degree temps and low humidity which really dried the course down.  I felt like the course played perfect that week and was just on the good side of the edge of no return.  Its at that point where I hope for some rain or I get the spray tank out and apply a wetting agent.  I had to get the sprayer out.  And then it rained the next night lol.  We got about 2.25" in 4 days which reset the moisture level throughout the course.  Fairways and tees got consistently green again and we put some more water into the pond.  Then the humidity set in and made life outdoors miserable for both human and turf.  With the humidity comes disease pressure and we all know that bentgrass is highly susceptible, and it did not prove that theory wrong. 

Pythium Blight

Pythium is the scariest word known to a bentgrass manager.  It is a fungal disease that has the ability to wipe out an entire stand of bentgrass in 24 hours unless treated.  I saw our first case this year at the start of June when we received our humidity spike.  At the beginning of #5 fairway on the left edge as well as all along the left edge of #13 fairway.  These are both habitually wet areas and pythium loves hot and wet conditions.  It is insanely mobile and can spread by foot, mower, or water which is why it can wipe out its host so quickly.  I didn't catch the spot on 5 soon enough and we lost a good portion of turf.  I sprayed the disease and stopped its spread, but there is a lot of healing that needs to take place. 

So we got that tamed down for the meantime and then we got into the drier weather that I mentioned earlier.  Then when we finally got that much awaited for rain, it also brought along with it some more bad news.  The silt collection pond built for the new home development failed to contain the 2" rain and flooded the back 2 tees on #14.  Along with the water came all the mud and silt to boot.  This was a topdressing of the worst kind.  Aside from the tees being a swamp for the next week, once they do dry, they will continue to become mud slicks everytime it rains on them unless that silt and mud are removed.  Plus the sediment will suffocate the plant and prevent any drainage or air movement into the rootzone.  So.........I pressure washed the tees with a hose over the holiday weekend.  It didn't remove it all, but i did get a lot out.  Good thing I had a lot of flood cleanup practice at Deer Creek lol.  Once stampede is over I will be core aerifying those 2 tees in order to remove more mud and allow for drainage.  This will probably have to happen a couple times before I can rest assured that they will survive.  Until then I do apologize, but you may find your tee markers on the far forward tee if the white and the blue tee boxes are too sloppy.  I called the construction superintendent and he told me their plan was to beef up the erosion protection which I have seen they did.  I just hope its enough or I will have him on the other end of the pressure washing hose.

So here we are, we made it to Stampede week and things are coming together.  Practice round Wednesday comes along and my fairway mower comes to me and lets me know he has seen more Pythium.

                                                 
So here I go, driving up and down each fairway for the rest of the day and evening searching and spraying.  I ended up spraying 9 acres worth of Pythium Blight.  I'm so ready for November! 

One last thing to bring up.  If you are having a practice session on the putting greens please keep your feet moving.  If you keep standing in the same spot to hit putt after putt after putt, you will leave bruise marks on the green.  This time of year the bent does not heal so quickly and sometimes not at all.  If you want to continue to hit a certain distance of putt then please circle around the cup after each round of balls.

Ok, enough doom and gloom.  Like I said, once I had a calm couple of hours,  I got to see the course for what it is right now.  Stunning!

Where did the sun go?

I believe the sun does still exist, however I have no proof at this point.  A little sun would go a long way for the course.  Things are green and growing, but I can see a little yellowing in the rough due to the extended shade we are receiving.  Hopefully we get plenty of sunshine once this week of rain passes us by.

This season has not started out so smoothly, but I think the course is starting to get to a good playable condition.  Obviously the Covid deal has made things super weird, but we have dealt with a couple major watering issues that have slowed our roll.  A major component of our pump house control panel failed which prevented us from having controlled irrigation.  The component was the PLC or Programmable Logic Controller which tells the pumps how to run.  The PLC reads the pressure in the pipes throughout the entire system and relays info to the pumps to tell them how much water to pump in order to keep optimal pressure.  With the PLC broken, our pumps only knew 100% on or 100% off.  In order to water anything, I had to turn on enough heads throughout the course to keep the pressure below dangerous levels.  This meant a lot of driving back and forth from hole to hole to pump house and back again.  No Bueno!  Oh yeah, another thing....the part needed to be shipped from Japan in the midst of Covid.  It got repaired and things are back to normal and I have never been so relieved.  That is until the crew developing the new housing development ripped a 20 foot stick of our pipe and wire out of the ground to the right of 14 tees.  We are back up and running, but I am still very nervous watching them scrape earth right next to 12 and 13.  I talked with the construction superintendent to get an idea of their plan and timetable.  Hopefully he keeps communicating with me because there will be a few things that they do that will impact our operation as well as cart traffic.  The sewer line will be crossing the cart path just behind the black tee box on 13.  You can see where they have clear cut a path for that.  This will take out the cart path and our main irrigation line which runs right below the path.  I will work with their crew in order to ensure continued cart traffic and irrigating.  Cart path will also need to be moved around the 12 green area because supposedly it currently runs through the corner lot's backyard.  He thought they would be moving earth for a couple months before they were ready to start in on the sewer install so looks like July will be a heck of a lot of fun.

There goes the neighborhood.  Sorry, I meant here comes the neighborhood, wahoo.

I have had a few members reach out to me asking for my opinion on fairway divots.  The question is do I want divots replaced or would I rather just have them filled with sand.  This answer has a lot of variables so here is my best effort.  I would love for all the divots to be replaced and stepped down.  That works with an ideal divot.  If the shot is picked pretty clean and there is nothing but a handful of grass blades, then obviously there isn't anything to replace and sand would be the choice.  I think the best answer would be to replace what you can and fill the edges with sand.  Weather is going to play a huge role in the survival of the divot as you can imagine, but even if it scorches and dies, there will be something there for a ball to roll over smoother than a void. 

Here is a divot with some mass and then another with none at all and how I would repair both.

I am almost happy with the way the greens look.  I think some sun will help that tremendously.  We have been able to verticut the past 2 mondays which really helped ball roll by taking out some grain.  It also provided some nice channels to stuff sand into.  The more sand we can get into the green's canopy the better they will play throughout the year.  Sand will filter down into the green profile and help dilute the ever-growing thatch layer.  This will keep the green's surface firmer and scalp resistant through the heat of the summer when bentgrass wants to get puffy and soft.  Ideally I would lightly topdress greens every monday, but sometimes that isn't feasible so it may become more like every other monday.

This is a profile from the right side of #13 green and it is pleasing to my eyes.  I have labeled the thatch layer and pointed out 2 aerification channels.  As turf grows, it sloughs off dead tissue as it regenerates new tissue.  This dead organic matter is known as thatch and it continuously builds just below the crown of the plant.  If left untouched, it will act as a sponge making the putting surface soft and squishy, as well as keeping water and nutrients from getting down to the roots.  All of this is bad.  You can see that the rootzone gets lighter in color as it goes down.  The top is darker due to the organic matter that has built up over the years and the bottom mix is pure sand that has not been disturbed.  As you are about to see, our rootzone here at Staley is in really good shape, which is proof of good, continuous topdressing in order to dilute the thatch and organic layers.  The following are examples of greens that were neglected of good topdressing and aerification.

  

You can see how much darker these organic layers are from the lack of sand dilution.  The turf looks good on top, but I can almost guarantee these greens struggled to drain water and got pretty soft and puffy in the middle of the summer. 

It sounds like we are going to get a little closer to normal at the beginning of June with league play starting again as well as clubhouse events.  This is great news and hopefully we will be able to put bunker rakes and ball washers out soon as well as get rid of those annoying pvc pieces in the cups. 

That is it for this month, thank you again for reading my thoughts here.  Please continue to stop me on the course with questions or comments. 

Real Spring

Well it seems that Spring is truly here now and the 2 week forecast shows no freezes and quite possibly no more frost delays.  I have also found a few morels so that is tipping me off as well.  The weather has been favorable so far and has allowed for some good root development throughout the course.  I have noticed a good increase in root depth and mass in the greens which is always welcomed.  I have just a few things to talk about today and then I need to get back to the course.

By now we all know about the virus outbreak and the steps taken throughout the course in order to help flatten the curve so I don't need to go into details.  It has forced us to run a skeleton crew for the moment, but I feel like we are still performing the necessary tasks each week to provide a quality golf course.  Plus we even sneaked in the drain project in 9 fairway which I was afraid we wouldn't have time for.  Finally we don't have to look at that ugly birdbath right in the middle of the fairway anymore.  It was a long run of drain pipe for such a small area, but way worth it.  I feel like it turned out real well and we avoided hitting any irrigation pipe which is always sigh of relief.

We have opened the range tee turf for the season and as of now we are on the mats Monday and Tuesday and on turf from Wednesday through Sunday.  Ultimately I would like to be on mats Mondays only, but I need to monitor usage and recovery so that we can have turf through the entire season.  Not having our range open to all classic level courses Monday through Wednesday will be a big help, but I have one more plea in order to have better turf.  Please, please, please hit your range balls in linear patterns like the following:

This is essential to the speedy recovery of the turf and the more frequent usage of the range tee grass.  Please do not make the following pattern with you practice shots:

The only way this will recover is if we sod it or seed and sand it.  And if I seed and sand this area, the sand will constantly be pushed out of the hole by my mowers.  If we have the linear patterns to work with, the strips of grass will prevent the mower from gouging the sand out which will allow the voids to be filled laterally.

Aside from just trying to keep the course mowed out, a few small projects we will be working on will be:

• Completing the irrigation controller move near #11 tee
• Pouring new concrete and installing the ball washer and trashcan pole at #18 tee
• Spraying the native with pre-emergent and broadleaf herbicide

Please, as always, feel free to stop me on the course with any questions or comments.  Enjoy the spring weather as much as you can.

Typical Spring/ 2nd Winter

Well as I sit in my office typing this it is 32° outside and I drove through snow this morning to get to work.  Three weeks ago, we began a two week stretch of high 60's and everybody thought ole Punxsutawney Phil knew what he was talking about.  Then the rains came and brought in cooler temps and I even see a couple nights in the 20's towards the end of this week.  This is fine by me because our team is trying to tie up all loose ends to our winter work before we need to start mowing every day. 

We have been extremely busy this off-season putting together some small details that I hope will create a clean and noticeable impact.  We built brand new red and white hazard stakes to mark the course with.  These will totally replace the ones on the course now, which are all different lengths and pretty worn out, if they are there at all.  We also built a new style of traffic stakes with color combo to match our tee markers and logo.  These will be placed along path edges to protect worn out turf areas from cart traffic.  They are quite a bit larger than the little black and white ones we currently use so I would strongly suggest not to drive over these haha.  We also built new brackets for the trash cans at each tee area.  These should be much stronger than the last ones so that the can will actually stand up straight. 

We have also repainted the tee markers and are applying a clear coat to them now.  I plan on having them back on the course this upcoming week of the 16th. 


The drain work on #8 tee boxes is just about finished.  We lack placing the sod back on the black tee trenches and rolling everything smooth.  This should also be finished the week of the 16th.  I will inform the pro shop when I will be allowing golf back on them.  It won't be long, I would really just like to clean up the mud and loose pea gravel before they got used.  We went big with this project and did 10 foot centers, which is the smallest distance between trenches recommended.  Its a huge pain in the rear with all the hand work involved shoveling everything out and shoveling the sand and gravel back in, but those tees needed some major help.  Plus my anxiety levels were through the roof seeing all the mud on the tee plus all the foot traffic through the sloppy conditions, but I think its really going to help the playability of those tees through the season.  The drainage trench we did on #7 around the tee complex is working for sure, but we will need to monitor it through the season before I can say those tees won't need the same treatment we are doing to #8.  One last drain I would love to get to in the next month is #9 fairway.  We have got to get rid of that birdbath that has formed in the fairway.  We still have one possible path in order for it to be a non-intrusive project, but if that doesn't pan out then we will need to trench all the way across the fairway towards the fairway bunker and then run the pipe into the creek.  Not really what I want to do, but we have to make that playable turf again!  Below is a photo I took with my drone to show the the full pattern of the drain lines.

A couple weeks ago we were able to team up with a couple members and do a small project that produced a huge impact.  I want to send a big thank you to Chris Brown and Jim Asher for their help with placing rip rap along the cart path edge going from #1 to #2 tee.  It looks fantastic and will help keep the cart path from eroding and falling into the pond.  

And one final thing to mention.  This is the month where our team performs everybody's favorite thing........Greens Aerification!

We will be aerifying all the greens on March 30th and 31st with 3/4" solid tines.  We will do 9 holes a day in order to keep 9 holes open for play each day.  The week before this, I plan to aerify collars and approaches with 5/8" hollow tines plus the areas of greens where we struggled at the end of the year.  This would be left edge of 11, front and left edges of 12, left edge of 13, and the small bowl area right of 17 greens.  This process will be done with no course closures.  I have a quick release fertilizer that I plan to apply to all greens the week of the 23rd that should get the greens growing which will help in healing the holes quicker.  

That is about all I have for this month.  I hope you all got a chance to play some while the weather was unseasonably nice.  If not, i'm sure it won't be much longer before the season really gets going.  

Winter Projects Review

Hello again and thank you for continuing to check out my blog.  Our winter projects list is getting knocked out and I believe we will be able to accomplish most of what I had envisioned before we are mowing grass once again.  I tend to try and slam a lot of work into the winter because that is when we have the time to make the biggest improvements.  This month's blog will just be a review and update on those projects.

I told you all in last month's blog that we had cut down 13 trees at that point.  Well now the total is at 40!

31 of those were dead and dangerous to all if left standing.  There are 2 more small pear trees at the main parking lot that still need to come down and then we will be finished for this off-season.  The only other tree work to do would be to prune and limb up trees throughout the round and native.  We will try, but i'm not sure if we will get that finished this season.  

Hopefully, today and tomorrow we will finish up the driving range tee irrigation project.  As I type right now, the guys are back-filling the trenches and setting the new sprinkler heads.  We are tamping the back-fill as much as possible to avoid settling, but with all the moisture in the dirt from the snow melt, I am afraid we will see some sunken trench lines.  This should be minimal and easily topdressed out with sand.  Once finished with that, we will roll the sod back in place, sand and seed any spots that got torn up, and water the heck out of it.  

Once that is finished, we will take the trencher to 7 and 8 tees to begin the drainage install.  If we have good weather we should be able to finish those 2 holes by the end of February.  If all goes to plan, we will have the month of March to make our pre-emergent herbicide application to the native and the rough and to split and replant all ornamental grasses throughout the course.  They have gotten out of control and need to be tamed down a bit.  This will take some time, but I feel that they need to be replanted with some sort of pattern or symmetry in mind.  

That is all I have at this point about the course and our work, however I do have a personal note to add.  On 2/2/2020 my wife and I were blessed with another healthy baby boy.  Can you believe that, on this kid's first day he gets a Super Bowl victory!!!  So you may see me with bags under my eyes quite often this year, but I bet with enough monster and coffee I can get through it.  

  Once again, thank you for reading whats on my mind and I hope to see you all on the course soon.

Winter Projects

Hello and welcome to 2020.  I never got around to writing a December blog and I apologize for that.  Between everyone taking their time off and the holidays, time got away from me.  In this month's post I will go over the work that we accomplished in December and what we plan to do for the next couple months.  I often get asked, "what do you guys do during the winter?"  The answer.......Prepare the golf course and equipment for next year.  There is never a "perfect" year and there is always something to improve upon.

The main points of focus this winter have been and will be:

• Remove dead and dying trees
• Remove trees that are hindering proper growth of putting greens
• Improvement of the driving range tee
• Drainage in certain tee boxes

So far, we have removed 13 dead trees and still have a handful left to get.  We are working around the clubhouse parking lot at the moment since the snowfall has limited our golf course access.  Aside from being ugly, dead trees pose a danger to all that are on the course and must be removed.  We are also working on removing living trees around some of the greens in order to improve putting quality throughout the year.  We have taken 4 down behind 11 green which held the green under nearly full shade until around 10:00 am.  Morning sun is the most important to turfgrass and especially greens.  With #11 getting full sun now and the unclogging of the drain that I noted in November's blog, I believe that putting quality will be much improved on that green.  Also the entire greens complex should be much drier and firmer from now on.  We plan on taking 4-5 trees down behind #12 green for the same reasons.  And yes, I do plan on removing the large sycamore 10 feet to the left of #13 green.  I know that it is a good looking tree, but it is absolutely ruining that green.  It remains in the shade all day which really keeps it from drying out and especially since that side of the green is the low point.  The roots of that tree are also all up in the rootzone of that green competing against the green's roots for water and nutrients. 

Before this latest snow event, Grant and I spent 2 weeks working on the driving range tee.  This area needs a lot of help.  The plan for this winter is to improve the irrigation and then next year improve the drainage.  The south half of the tee is watered by large golf heads like the ones you will find on the course.  This is good, however due to issues in the past, all 6 heads have been wired up to run at the same time.  This is not good.  That ruins the pressure and when the streams of water cross each other, it creates a downpour in the middle.  Just like Egon said, "Don't cross the streams!"

The North side is irrigated by little home lawn sprinklers that are controlled by battery powered timers. Less than ideal.  Since we have no maps of the irrigation system Grant and I basically dug holes just to find out what was underground and how the system up there was put together.  Some of  these holes ended up being 5 feet deep! We figured out the wiring part of the problem and will have it to where sprinklers will be grouped by 2 or 3's and will be linked into our central control system.  This is a huge milestone.  Once the snow melts we will trench in new irrigation pipe and wire in order to add new golf heads on the North side to replace the home lawn heads.  This will allow us to water the range tee more consistently.  As we dug all these holes, we noticed the soil makeup of the tee is pretty bad.  Just below the grass layer is about 2-3 inches of a good sand based mix, but then below that is some nasty clay.  No wonder that tee doesn't drain for squat!  We will watch the new irrigation work this year and see what improvements that brings.  Next off-season we will probably need to install some pretty extensive drain lines through the entire tee.  In the meantime, we can get aggressive with the deep tiner and sand.

Speaking of tee box drainage, we are real close to trenching #7 and #8 tee drains.  We will be installing drain lines in the blue and black tees on #8.  There are a lot of tees that are just unusable after a heavy rain, but I feel 8 is the worst.  The lines will run from North to South and end up the the creek to the right of the tees.  #7 will have 1 long trench line running through the native from the back of the black tee to the front of the blue tee.  My theory is that a lot of water comes from that hillside and the neighborhood into those tees and makes them unplayable.  This might end up only being step 1 if those tees remain soaked.  If that is the case then lines will be installed just like on #8.  

Well I hope everybody had a fun and safe new years and I look forward to seeing you all back on the course in 2020.  

Greens Drainage and Tree Work

The calendar says that Thanksgiving is tomorrow, but i'm pretty sure I saw golfers in shorts on Monday. Well one thing I am thankful for is that Friday is the final Razorback football game of the year.....what a train wreck!

As the supposed winter begins we are slowly getting into our off-season practices.  Our team will be cutting new cups every 100 rounds or so as well as raking bunkers and moving tee markers.  We have filled the ball washers with windshield washer fluid so they will not freeze and crack.  When the forecast begins to show cold weather really settling in, we will pull the washers and tee markers from the course for reconditioning this winter. During the days that we have had below freezing weather, Manuel and Mario have been detailing our equipment and making them shine like new. These two guys also are the ones who put up the clubhouse Christmas lights which look spectacular. 

Grant has begun to remove some of the dead trees from around the course.  He cut 4 down just past the bridge on #14.  The next area we will get to will probably be behind #11 green, where 4 more trees will be removed in order to allow morning sunlight to hit the green.  I will have to rent a splitter, but my plan is to split all the tree trunks for firewood which I will sell for $50 a truck load once I get a supply built up.  If you are interested check with me later this winter.  

While he has been busy with that, I have been locating greens drain lines to make sure they are working properly.  I have been surprised so far, and most of the main trunk lines have been clear and working well.  That is, except for #11.  The drain line for this green runs into the woods on the left side and was actually crushed back into the ground not allowing water or air to escape.  Turns out that was a great place for a squirrel to hide it's stash of nuts haha.  

The last 8 feet of this drain line was packed with mud, acorns, and walnuts.  I cut this piece off and now the green will be able to drain and breath which I am very excited about.  

I have also used our skid steer to push all the piled up brush behind #12 green down the hill.  This has left a not so beautiful view as all the vegetation was stripped off in the process, but I assure you that the native grass will re-establish itself in the spring and if it doesn't, I will seed it.  

That is about all I have for this month so please have a safe and pleasant holiday season, and keep taking advantage of the 60 degree days when they pop up.