Water Management and Fall Work

 I apologize for my blog absence in October, but between some vacation time and extremely dry conditions I have not had much time to give to the computer.  This month I would like to address how I choose to water the course throughout the year as I know that is a major talking point among players.  I will also start to get into my fall and winter plans for our crew. 

This kinda got long on me so get your energy drinks handy.

The hardest part of my job is and will always be, judging the weather patterns and applying the correct amount of water each day of the growing season to each different variety of turf throughout the course.  This job would be a lot easier if our landscape was flat, but as we all know Staley has a little slope to it. My goal will always be firm and fast, but I won't sit here and tell you that your drive is going to bounce and run in the end of July just like it is now in November.  I do not however, want to see balls plug in fairways.  I know that there were a couple weeks in August that this place was way too wet and that is my fault.  Humidity spiked and the temps were around 95 for a long stretch and I wasn't brave enough to shut the water off until it was too late.  Ultimately I need to walk about 6 fairways a day next season in order to keep a closer eye on moisture.  

So there is my philosophy, but matching it up with the mapping of our irrigation system is another challenge.  Each satellite box can hold 50 wires to run 50 sprinklers.  The way that things are set up, each box controls more than 50 heads so sprinklers have to be paired up in order to water what we need.  Greens and green surround heads are never paired up in order to give us as much control as possible around the most important areas.  Fairway and rough heads are almost all paired with another.  Our sprinklers have a watering radius of 85 feet and are supposed to be triangulated throughout the course in order to water right up to the next sprinkler in line.  So with 2 sprinklers paired up I am running the same amount of water for a 255ft area regardless of the different slopes and valleys in that area.  Some areas on the course actually have 3 or 4 heads paired together so consistent watering is even tougher there. In the middle of the summer when temps are in the 90's I have to apply the amount of water in each area to keep the mounds alive and unfortunately that means that the valleys receive more water than necessary.  At this time, Grant is re-wiring all of our satellite controllers to where we will get better sprinkler match-ups in order to be more efficient with our water and to have more consistent moisture levels throughout the fairways.  

We have made it through about half of the tee aerification process and it has been as much of a nightmare as I had envisioned.  Maybe not so much of a nightmare, but I knew that it would take us quite a while to get it done.  We have had to replace a hand-full of parts on the machine as it started to rip up some turf on a few tees.  We have also had to put off the process all together due to some unseasonably warm weather. Now the weather has finally cooled off like it should be so we will pick back up and finish this week.  For the most part, the white and blue tees are the ones left to punch and sand so I will be moving tee markers around to accommodate our work.  The white tees will probably end up on the gold boxes more often than not so enjoy shorter irons into greens.  After that we will apply a slow release fertilizer to all the tees in order to store some nutrients in the plant over winter and hopefully have a quicker green-up in the spring.  We will apply the same type of fertilizer to the greens in the next 2 weeks as well.  Some of the tees will need another sanding to fill up the holes, but we can address that once we get holes punched in all of them.  I just keep reminding myself that this has to be done in order to have good tees throughout the entire year.

We have begun some underbrush clearing in parts of the course that have been annoying me since I started here and there will be more to come.  We have worked on behind #1 green and to the right of #5 cartpath.  These areas are not finished yet.  I will be going back through with the saws again to clear out dead and dying trees as well as raising the canopy.  It is part of my grand plan of getting everything limbed up throughout the native areas.  It is more work than can be completed in 1 or even 2 off-seasons, but we hope to make big dents each year.  A couple areas on my radar this year are left of #11 green, between #15 cartpath and #16 tees, and to the right of #3 green. All these areas need more sunlight and air movement to give us better turf plus they will look a lot better without the clutter.  There are also some more dead and problematic trees throughout the course that will need to come down this year. 

Back in September the topic of the left side of #11 green bank came up and the thinning turf in that area that will not stop a ball.  I can attest to this first hand as I played a round a couple weeks ago and a very well placed gap wedge checked a couple feet from the green's right edge, but ended up in the native.  Now some of that is due to the way #11 green is, but the turf on the left side of the green bank is extremely poor and thin and sure doesn't hold a ball.  I am hoping that I can get some decent sunlight on that turf after we do some clearing of trees and brush, but I just don't want to clear cut that side for a few reasons.  

• Against popular belief, I really do like trees.  They play a big part of our aesthetics as they frame holes.
• If you look through the trees there, you will see some large power lines just on the other side.  So a) I don't want to fall any trees into them, and b) I don't want that to be our visual from the green.
• It would take away our natural fence protecting patrons from falling off the cliff, and I would rather not put a non-natural fence up .

So other than some selective tree thinning I am thinking about maybe only mowing that green bank once a week instead of twice next year as well as some extra fertilizer.  I can also apply some extra wetting agent on that hillside because I believe that lack of moisture on that severe slope is adding to the decline of turf.  Speaking of the slope, it has been asked if adding soil to the slope could lessen the incline to help.  That would help, however in the front of the green where the bank slope is the steepest, the cliff edge is too close in order to raise the level without adding something to cliff wall.  From the middle of the green to the back I think there is enough room to do something like this.  This would all be a large undertaking, but definitely something to put on the discussion board when ownership wants to start talking capital projects.  One more thing that I will probably implement in order to help this situation is altering the mowing patterns on #11 green.  We switch directions everyday that we mow to keep the "grain" of the green from getting too strong.  On #11 if we are not mowing from front to back then our mower has to make a turn on the hillside in question.  This is just added stress on the weak area of turf 5-6 times a week.  If we just stick to mowing front to back on that hole alone, we may be able to help that slope out.  I will just need to monitor the tracking from the mower tires on that green. 

We are now in the time of year where frost delays will be very common.  Grant and I always try to make the best decision on start times to accommodate getting you all on the course as soon as possible, while keeping the golf course safe.  Below is a picture of the traffic from 1 foursome putting out.  If there were to be frost on the green all of these footprints would be dead by the afternoon.  This is why we take frost delays very seriously.  Here is the recipe for a frost.  40 degrees or less for overnight low, clear skies, and low winds.  If any of those cases are not there, then there will be a good chance of no frost.  

I think that about exhausts my pertinent information at the time.  I would like to thank all of those who have voiced or typed their appreciation of what my staff and I do on a daily basis here at Staley.  There are a ton of extremely stressful times throughout our year and getting those compliments really helps our psyche.  I won't speak for all of us, but I at least love what I do and really enjoy my time here. 

P.S.  

    I think the range tee is coming along so much better than I expected due to the unseasonably warm weather we have had this fall.  I still see some good cool season grass growing weather in the next couple weeks so I have at least 3 more fertilizer apps planned to continue to push it.  I hope everyone can squeeze some more rounds of golf in before winter sets in and please continue to stop me with any questions or comments.
 

Range Tee Renovation

 

I am pleased to announce that we are moving forward with a driving range tee renovation.  Our goal is to ensure a good stand of turf allowing members to use the grass tee more than in the past.  I would like to see the mats used only on Mondays, for outside events, and after rain events.  I believe that with our renovation plan, we will be able to accomplish this.

On Monday the 28^th, a contractor will be on site to till and laser level the entire range tee so that there will be a 1 percent slope from north to south and from east to west.  This will ensure a good surface drainage of moisture and a quicker drying of the teeing surface.  Once this is complete, we will then seed a well proven variety of bluegrass for the hitting area.  Turf Blue HGT is the name of this variety and it has performed very well throughout the transition zone in range tee and fairway type situations.  Some colleagues have also touted its ability to withstand abuse during the heat of the summer.  Choosing a bluegrass over zoysia should allow us to use the grass tee deeper into the year since it doesn’t transition into dormancy as early.  This variety also grows with rhizomes, meaning it grows laterally similar to bentgrass and bermudagrass.   Below are a couple pictures of this turf in Kirksville, MO on August 20^th. 

 

 

I am confident that this turf will stand up to the abuse of a full golf season and will be able to fill in divots through the heat of the summer where the bentgrass failed to do so.  Once the seed has been planted it will be 14-20 days before we see germination.  I plan on applying some pre-plant fertilizer to help jump start the new seedlings and from there on we will push it has hard as we can until the cold weather shuts the grass down for the year.  Once the weather starts to break in March, we will start pushing the new turf hard again.  We will do everything possible in order to get members on the grass as early as possible in 2021.  Again, I am very excited about this project and believe that there will be more time spent hitting off the grass in the future.  As always, stop me with questions or have the proshop relay any to me.

Successes and Failures

Public Service Announcement

We are aerifying greens on Sept. 22nd and 23rd

I don't know that I have ever been happier to reach the month of September.  This has been a miserable last 6 weeks trying to keep tees and fairways in good playing condition.  The good news is that these areas are healing nicely, but they will still need a bunch of work done in order to keep these problems from coming back each year.  I will address my plans there further in this posting.  In a couple of my explanations, I will mention traffic.  Staley is on pace to have 30,000 rounds played this year.  Average for a private club would be around 24,000.  I would have to acquire some past info in order to know Staley's average, but 30 is a bunch.  Especially when most of those rounds are played with 1 person per cart.  The good thing is that the greens have held up well all year long and should start playing even better as they firm up when the humidity leaves us.  

Tee Boxes

So its apparent to all that the tees on the course have been beat down this year.  They took a hard hit during the last 2 weeks of July when we received 8 inches of rain in those 2 weeks.  The tees don't drain well at all and when they get saturated every divot is larger than normal and will not recover when the temps are in the 90's.  What is worse than the divot is the foot twist that comes with every swing.  A person's feet will literally rip the top half of the grass plant from its roots when the ground is soft and wet.  Again, when temps stay in the 90's during this, there is no recovery happening so then that spot will die.  Some tees are worse than others, and some tees seem to not be affected at all.  My first theory would be soil composition and that some tees are built with more clay than others.  Like 3,6,and 7 tees seem to take traffic a lot better than 1,2,4, and 5.  The 1 thing that I know I can do to create a more consistent rootzone is aerification.  Our tees need to be on a more strict aerification schedule meaning pulling cores once in the spring and once in the fall plus a heavy topdressing with each.  This will help with drainage and the overall soil composition.  I also started ramping up the fertility on the tees when I started seeing the damage.  The fertilizer I was spraying is high in potassium which aids in the plant's stress management and I will from now on be starting earlier in the year with it.  There is another product that I tested this year on tees that I will also be implementing earlier before the stressful part of the year.  It contains Silicon which creates a rigidity in the plant to help against traffic and stress.  I literally saw a difference in the leaf blades within 24 hours.  Below is a soil profile of #5 tee.  There is actually a decent layer of sand below the thatch layer.  However, that amount of thatch can definitely cause water to stay at the top surface and not penetrate.  Pulling a plug during aerification is a must for this situation.  I am sure I will find similar profiles as I check more trouble tees.   

So I just got back from profiling a couple more tees and it hurts my heart to see what I found.  Its the same mess with large thatch layers and a lot of clay.  These 3 photos were all taken from the same tee on #1.  It just shows the inconsistency across the board.  Core aerification will help this tremendously, its just going to take some time.  If I punch holes this fall and next spring, we should see a good improvement, but it will take a couple years strung together of good cultural practices in order to have excellent, playable tees across the entire course.  We can get there.

 

Fairways

So I addressed the fairway troughs in my last posting, but I wanted to talk briefly about them again.  I painted out the drain lines that I would like to install and it is a literal mile of pipe.  I will probably not be able to get all that done this off-season, but we are going to give our best shot.  Just about every hole needs some help, but I will prioritize the best I can in order to address landing zone areas first.  #1 has quite a bit in the prime landing zone from the tee so we will probably wait for that one until mid winter when play has died down.  Other than that hole, numbers 5, 13, 14, & 16 will probably be my top priorities.  I will more than likely keep 13 for last just because there is so much to do there. 

Noticed Improvements

We have seen improved turf quality from last year to this in some areas that we worked on in the off season.  The drainage in #8 tees has worked extremely well and has kept those tees playable throughout the year.  We will get the drain lines seeded this fall where they settled.  11 green has healed in nicely and seems to be firmer with the removal of the trees and clearing of the drain lines.  13 green has also healed in well since it receives more sunlight.  The bowl area on 17 green has survived this year.  Grant was able to sod cut a few strips of rough and shave down the soil below to drop the grade a little.  This allows any surface water to runoff instead of getting stuck on the bentgrass.  Below are pictures comparing the soil profile in that green area from last year to this year.  Black layer had formed last year due to excessive water sitting in the profile.  This creates an anaerobic environment for the rootzone which in turn kills the plant.  Now that we have removed the water, the rootzone is healthy. 

More areas of improvement are approaches.  Last year we had a lot of turf loss due to heavy clay soils being too saturated and creating more anaerobic rootzones.  This year we were able to aerify approaches twice creating more air space in the soil and an overall healthier rootzone.  We will core aerify approaches one more time this fall.   

I hope you have enjoyed another turf talk and as always, feel free to stop me on the course with any questions.

No More Please!

I Give Up, Please Stop Raining!

Hopefully the forecast is correct and we will be getting some much drier and cooler weather in the coming weeks.  Staley has received 10 inches of rain in the month of July and 8.5 of that has come after the 15th. There is nowhere for the water to go at this point.  The taller bentgrass on tees and fairways has fought against high heat and humidity for 2 months now and it is extremely tired.  All the added moisture makes it highly susceptible to mechanical damage from golf cart and mower tires, or the twisting action of feet on tees.  Add to that the highest disease pressure I have seen in 10 years and you have a great recipe for the butt kicking of Brien.   Thank goodness we only have a month to go until grass wants to grow again.

My main goal of this post is to address the disease that we are seeing on tees and fairways at right now.  The main culprit is Brown Patch and it is everywhere.  We started seeing it on the 23rd of July on tees and fairways.  If not controlled preventatively, this disease will start showing up around the start of July or late June if humidity levels are high.  We made our first preventative app on the 30th of June and it should have given us 28 days of coverage.  Our second app was scheduled for the 20th of July because it usually takes the chemical 3 days or so to work its way into the part of the plant it needs to be in.  Well........it rained 1.25" that day.  And then it rained .75" the next day.  So at this point its Wednesday and we need to spray greens, tees, and fairways so greens got priority. Plus we needed to mow tees and fairways before we could spray them.  Then tees got sprayed thursday and fairways friday.  Brown Patch had already started showing on Thursday so just like that we are sunk and playing catch-up.  I am still confident in the initial chemical that we used and I believe that it let go of the rope early due to being less effective at the end of its life span and the weather driven disease pressure was through the roof.  Our second application should be in the plant well by now and stopping the spread of the Brown Patch so that the turf can start to heal.  However, extra moisture and clouds are pretty poor healing mechanisms.  

So this past week my rain gauge said we only got 2" and I know that may be hard to believe with as wet as the course is, but when an area reaches field capacity it doesn't take much rain before you see standing water and saturated ground.  So due to all this water at the surface, all the Brown Patch areas have started forming a nice black algae just in case it didn't look bad enough already.  This is really evident in the fairway troughs.  I have not noticed any algae on tees and I am thinking that is due to the deep tine aerification they got tuesday and wednesday.  Don't get me wrong, the tees are still soaked, but the holes provided the water a place to go instead of sitting on top. So, yesterday I took out our Air2 G2 machine and injected air into these saturated fairway troughs just to try to open up some channels for the water to find.

So bring on the cooler and drier weather and lets get things healed up to where we were at the beginning of July.  The forecast looks favorable through the middle of August so thats a good start.  As always, feel free to stop me on the course and ask me anything.  

Air2G2 Machine

I didn't want to wait until next month's blog to add this so here it is.  The monday after Stampede I went out with a new type of aerifier and treated a few areas on our greens.  Some areas I did in order to combat against traffic and compaction, and other areas I did were due to being the low spot in the green where all the water drains down to.  The machine is call the Air2G2 and it uses compressed air in order to fracture the soil and create more pore space for oxygen.  This also aides in drainage of wet areas.  The machine shoots 3 rods into the green and then ejects air out of the sides of the rods throughout the soil profile.  The rods do this at a 3" depth and then again at a 12" depth with each shot.  If you watch closely you can actually see the turf left up from the air injection.

The areas I treated were the lower putting green, the right side of #3 green, all of #5 green, the middle and left of #9 green, the left and front sides of #11 and #12, the valley on #13 green, and the valley on #17 green.

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!