Water on my head and water on the brain



#12 fairway with puddles

     After what seemed like a never ending summer watering season it sure has been nice to get a decent amount of rain in the last couple of months. We are now going on our 8th straight week without watering the golf course for the purpose of supplying moisture for the turf. This is by far the longest stretch we've gone in the last couple years. Even though we have had some really nice rain storms over the last couple months we have not forgotten what this last summer was like thus we have "water on the brain."
     Part of our winter projects to continue making changes to the irrigation system to better utilize the water we do have during the summer. With these changes to the irrigation system we are also trying to reduce the amount of irrigated turf in some areas.
     The most recent area we made changes to was around #2 tee. The spacing was changed from 70' spacing down to 60-65' spacing and changed to more of a triangular set up as opposed to the square spacing that was originally installed. We did have to add one sprinkler to make the triangular spacing work, but we also converted all of the sprinklers to part circles sprinklers (most at 180*) to conserve on water. Here's Hung checking his adjustments of the part circles he just installed.

Hung's the man!

     The next area we are working on is #11 tee. We have always struggled here because the spacing was installed a little too far apart. We are also taking this chance to eliminate throwing any water to the right of the tees in the bowl that separates #11 & #14 tees. Here's Hung starting with the first sprinkler to be moved behind #11 tee and #16 green.

Always staying busy

     What's next you ask? We do have a list of the worst areas and are planning to get through 4-5 areas before April of next year. At this point it looks like after we finish up #11 tee we are going to make a few changes at #15 tees and then on to #7 tees. Stay tuned to the blog as we will continue to post on our progress as we move through the course making these changes.

Another beautiful winter day on the Monterey peninsula!

- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

The kids are coming!

This coming weekend we are hosting the U.S. Kids "Monterey Challenge." Between our course and Del Monte golf course there are over 200 kids from age 6 to 15. Depending on the age range, some play all 18 holes and the younger ones just 9 holes.



This is the second year of the Monterey Challenge and seems to be a hit as the number of participants has increased by 40 players over last year. Hopefully the rain will stay away and give the kids a couple good days to play their best. Good luck to all the participants!
- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

A little off color

For the past couple of weeks we have been out spraying for Kikuyu grass throughout the course. Kikuyu is a warm season grass that actually does pretty well in our cooler climate on the Monterey peninsula but in our case we treat it as a weed. Since Kikuyu is a warm season grass it starts to shut down its growth patterns as the soil temperatures start to drop in the winter. This makes for an excellent time to spray herbicides to knock it back as the plant will translocate the herbicide down to its roots as it tries to store it's energy in the root system for the next growing season. Below is a picture of some Kikuyu that was sprayed last week along the lake bank in front of #10 green. For the most part the tees and fairways are pretty free of Kikuyu so we've put a little more effort this year into eradicating it from our rough.



In this picture you also see that the lakes are still a little on the low side. Hopefully we get a good rain soon to help fill both lakes up!

- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Irrigation Adjustments - #10 Right Rough

During the upcoming winter season we are putting a lot of effort into continuing our irrigation adjustments throughout the course. Most of these adjustments will be to eliminate areas that do not need to be irrigated. The first area of attack this year was the right rough of #10 before the pump house.



Our irrigation tech Hung had to move three sprinklers and change out 6 full circle sprinklers to part circles. With these changes we will help to reduce our water usage as well as improve turf quality through better coverage in the fairway. We followed up these adjustments by aerifying, seeding and top-dressing the thin areas in the rough and fairway.


- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Hurricane @ The Pines

No, Hurricane Sandy did not come anywhere close to us here on the west coast and our hearts go out to all those affected by this horrible storm. But if you saw the mess we created between #5 & #6 today, it looked like we had strong winds from a hurricane knock down a couple of trees. Actually it was Tom at it again, knocking the last couple of dead pines down in the rough.



After another back 9 start for the golfers we were able to have a little more time to get most of the mess cleaned up with a little left for tomorrow, depending on the rain in the forecast.
One of the difficulties we had with cutting down these two trees was the location of the two irrigation clocks that were set right between the base of both trees. But again Tom and company were on top of the situation and as you can see from the picture below he came up with a pretty good idea to help protect the clocks. Fortunately he was able to fall the trees away from the clocks and so there weren't any close calls.



Here now is a before and after picture of the 5th hole. This should help open up the right half of the fairway for those playing from the blue tees.







- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Storage Bins and Compost

This last week we ordered 14 more concrete blocks so we could finish off a couple more of the storage bins in our parking lot.



Our asst. superintendent Tom did most of the heavy lifting with our Case backhoe. Here he is unloading the blocks from the truck.
On Friday, Tom and our mechanic Jim moved the blocks into place. We now how 5 different bins for storage. This will keep us from contaminating different products and help to keep the parking lots a little cleaner.



This past week we also ordered some more compost to use out on the course. We are going to go through the fairways this next week try to get some of the thin areas to fill in. We will aerify, seed and top dress the areas with compost.



- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Overseeding the clubhouse lawns

The last couple of days we've been prepping the two largest lawns at the clubhouse to be over-seeded. These two lawns consist of mostly kikuyu grass that is considered a warm season grass but thrives in our cool season climate. The kikuyu stays pretty green throughout most of the year except when we get frost. We are going to overseed these lawns with rye grass so that during our 3 to 4 month window of possible frost conditions the front and side of the clubhouse will still have an attractive look and green lawns.

The photo above is from Thursday when we were scalping down the kikuyu to prepare a good seed bed. The push mowers were not the greatest idea due to the fact that the kikuyu is a pretty tough grass. We'll come up with a different tactic for next year.
Today the guys finished up the preparations by aerifying the lawns and dragging the plugs. That was followed up by a healthy amount of seed and some starter fertilizer. We will keep this area plenty moist over the next 7-10 days as we wait for the seed to germinate.
This past week we also finished off the back of the clubhouse with a good amount of gorilla hair mulch to keep the weeds down and for a more appealing look until next spring when we will finish planting the ground cover.

- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Another one goes down.....

This morning we had a back 9 start so that we could have plenty of time to cut down one of the dead pines between #5 tee and #6 fairway.



These trees have needed to come down for some time but with a short staff and a long dry summer we have put our efforts into maintaining the course.
Now that we have received a little rain we were able to divert some of our staff to getting these trees cut down. Tom took the reins of the project and got everything ready and well organized and by 7:30 the first tree was on the ground and limbs were being chipped. We have scheduled another back 9 start for next Wednesday and with a little luck we should have the other two knocked down and cleaned up.
- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

A little perk-up

Yesterday the golf course received a little perk-up from two different sources. The first came from a much needed fertilizer application.



With the threat of rain yesterday morning we didn't think we would be able to time our fertilizer application before the rain, but as fate would have it we were able to get out and fertilize wall to wall before any rain.
During our lunchtime the turf got its second perk-up with a much needed 3/10" of rain.



This was the first significant rainfall in about five months.
As we were out mowing and prepping the course this morning you could see the turf standing more upright and already had better color. I'm sure the fertilizer is just starting to kick in but it sure is amazing what a little rain can do on its own!



- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Watering Woes and Poking Holes

Water has and probably will be our biggest challenge from year to year. It has now been over 175 days since we've recorded any significant rainfall in our rain gauge. With nothing in the ten day forecast, watering is still at the forefront of our daily thoughts and decisions. Fortunately the days are getting shorter and the demand for irrigation has dropped off significantly in the last few weeks. Our biggest challenge with irrigation right now has nothing to do the quantity of water we have but the ability to get the water on the course.


The picture above shows a couple of our irrigation clocks that were run in to by a golf cart on Saturday afternoon. As of now, our assistant superintendent Tom was able to get one of them working but the other one is going to take a little bit of work and money to get back online. Our Toro irrigation rep is going to be coming by the course on Wednesday to help us get the right parts ordered and get everything back in working order. At this point we are running all of the irrigation on hole #17 by hand.
Well enough with the watering woes, now it's time to poke some holes. If you've been out playing in the last week you'll notice we went through and sliced all of the fairways with our Aerway slicer.


The Aerway slicer is a pretty non-disruptive aeration process that once mowed over isn't really noticeable. After a break this week we will be back out next week with a 5/8" solid tine on the fairways as well as a 5/8" coring of the tee boxes. Once the tees are finished up we will be coring a bunch of high traffic area throughout the course. Fairways and tees should be finished within the week.
- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Trees Planted @ #1 Tee

Today we finished up plating three more trees on #1 tee bank between the white tee and the split-rail fence. We felt like this would be a great place to add a little more color and a nice visual change. The trees are all 'fruitless plum' and although they do lose their leaves in the fall, next spring they should really have a nice contrast against the green turf. We also plan to continue to reduce the turf in this area and replace with wood chips as there is no real need to grow turf in this area.












- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Our fingers are crossed!

Today myself, Asst. Super Tom and a couple other team members transplanted a couple of trees from the postgraduate school to an area alongside the cart path that goes from #13 green towards #14 tee. These trees should help to break up some of the landscape as well as give some new sight lines off of #11 & #13 tees.
We will be transplanting three more trees to the right of the white tee on #1 in the next couple of days.
The title of this post is "Our fingers our crossed" because all of these trees have been in a 24" boxes for way too long. Hopefully they will enjoy their new environments!

- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Chipping Green Aerification

This past week Tom aerified our chipping green as a test for our summer aerification on the greens. We will finally be aerifying our green this coming July 16-18. After a little over 3 1/2 years we are finally seeing some evidence that aerification is necessary to keep our greens in the best condition possible. With the ever present threat of poa annua invading our bentgrass greens, we are waiting until July as less seed heads should be present. Here are a couple pictures of the process and the final product.






We went ahead and added some new seed after the holes were almost filled. We didn't really need to as we have a pretty good stand of bentgrass but we wanted to see what would happen as the seed started to grow and if it would have any affect on playability.
- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Did you notice??

If you haven't noticed the new look to our tee signs take another look!



Our resident handyman Craig has been busy the last couple weeks repainting the smaller numbers that designate each tee color on our tee signs.
When I ordered the the signs some three years ago all of the numbers were supposed to be a nice bright gold that I thought would look very nice against the green sign. But once the signs showed up at the course, the gold color was too dull to be seen from far away.
Last year Craig had painted the large hole number which really stood out well. So I approached him this spring about painting the small yardage numbers on the signs. After a little arm twisting he agreed and got started right away. I think it has really made a huge difference. Thanks again Craig for all you do for us!



- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Needle Tine and Top Dress

     This week we were able to get out and top dress and needle tine all of the greens. We split it up into two days with the front nine on Monday and the back nine on Tuesday. The main reason for this process was to open up the greens for a little air and gas exchange as well as break the surface tension that the bent grass creates to get more water below the surface. After the good flushing we received from the rains this last month the greens have been growing really well.
     We have been fighting a few hot spots on the greens in the last couple of weeks as you can see in the picture below.

Dry Area on #6 Green

     The process we went through the last couple mornings included mowing of the greens, top dressing the greens and aerification with an 8mm needle tine at 2" x 2" spacing. Next we used our sweep-n-fill sweeper to brush the sand into the turf canopy and followed that up with our greens roller. The final step was to run 4 to 5 minutes of water to get the greens through the day until we are able to get 30+ minutes of water on the greens at night.

View of the aerator on #3 green

View of the green before the needle tine

     This time around we were able to use our new roller attachment on our Toro 648 greens aerator. This was definitely a good purchase as we seemed to have a better after aerification look with less tufting of the aerification holes. Here's a look at the new roller.

New roller on the aerator

     We will continue to monitor the greens pretty close in the next few days to make sure they don't dry out more than we want since there will be a little more air reaching the root zone. We will be spraying greens on Wednesday with our bi-weekly foliar fertilizer application. We will also be spreading some gypsum and a 0-0-25 fertilizer with some minor nutrients to help get us through the next couple of months. All in all we should be healed up by the weekend and back to normal by next Monday.

Finishing Touches

     This last week we were able to finish a couple final steps to a project we started a few months back. The project I am referring to is the new posts and cable that now runs down the entire 4th hole.

The cable and posts on #4

     What you don't see in the photo above are the irrigation wires we put and run the entire length of #4 underneath the posts and cable. We also trenched a few wires back up towards #3 green. We added these new wires for some future irrigation projects.
     The first of those projects was the addition of a sprinkler behind #4 green. Because of some improper spacing between some of the surrounds sprinkler heads we need to fill in a gap on the back left slope. Here's Hung trenching for the new pipe. As with most of our sprinkler additions this winter this should really help us keep turf healthier and much better looking than the last couple of summers.

Hung handling the trencher

     One of the final steps to the larger project was to experiment with some underground drip tubing around the fairway bunker. After seeing this done at another course in our area I have been very eager to try it out at our course. This past fall we were fortunate to purchase a new sod cutter which also came with a "mole kit" attachment that can be used to pull wires and drip tubing. Here it is with the drip tubing attached.

The "mole kit" with drip tubing

     We chose the fairway bunker on #4 for our trial run because it was fairly flat all around the bunker. First we installed a 1" electric valve and hooked it up to one of the wires we ran under the posts and cable. Next we painted a line about 14" from the edge of the bunker to run our first line. After a little trial and error we finally made it around the bunker twice (the second line about 14" from the first)and Hung got everything hooked up to the valve. Now it's time to see how long and often we need to run it throughout the summer. If it works out well we will probably try to do the same thing to a few more of our problem bunkers in the coming year.

Enrique and Hung finishing up the last stretch

Success! There's water coming out!

     We also experimented pulling some irrigation wires with the new trencher and mole kit in front of #3 green. It worked really well and helped us finally get some wires to some sprinklers we added last summer. Now we should have better control now that we can run these sprinklers from our irrigation computer.

The mole kit with wires

Our first run with wires

New sprinklers running off the irrigation clock

Hung is always smiling

New sprinkler @ #9 Approach

This spring we have added quite a few sprinklers throughout the course. Our latest addiction has been installed in the approach of #9 green. We have always seemed to have struggled with keeping the turf healthy in the beginning of the approach, infront of the left green side bunker and in the area between the right green side bunker and the cart path. So we decided that a new sprinkler here would be our next addition and hopefully with a little more water on a consistent basis we will achieve some better results. As of right now the sprinkler will be have to be run manually until we get a station wire hooked up to it in the near future.

Hung and Tom connecting the pipe

Hung re-setting the greens sprinklers

We've got water!!!

- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

On Course With Organics

     One of my goals this year was to introduce some organic fertilizers and compost into our maintenance regime. We were able to achieve the first part of this goal by spreading an organic fertilizer at a rate of about a half pound of nitrogen after our spring fairway and tee aerifications. We used a couple different brands mainly to experiment with the smell and both brands had a pretty mild oder. From what I can tell, the more you pay for the organic fertilizer the less it seems to smell. This is definitely something we will continue to use and experiment with as a way to feed our turf as well as the soil. We will be experimenting on the range this next week with a different brand that could have a little stronger aroma.
     This past week we were able to achieve the second part of our organic goal by using some compost on the course. After doing some research and finally finding a good supplier, we had about 25 tons of compost delivered to the course. We will begin this year by spreading this load of compost out on some of our high traffic areas as well as areas that tend to dry out a little sooner than others. Compost serves many purposes on the course and our hope is that it will help us keep a higher quality turf grass without a bunch of synthetic amendments. Compost can help build better soil structure as well as help with moisture retention thus potentially needing less fertilizer and less water. Right now we are spreading it with our two greens top dressers and hope to either purchase or borrow a larger fairway top dresser as we try to incorporate more compost on a larger scale.

Compost ready to go out on the course

A handful of goodness!

Tom taking another load out to the course.

- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent