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

33 Years and Going Strong

We love to see Jim smile!

Our golf maintenance mechanic Jim just celebrated his 33rd year here on the golf course. From a maintenance worker to an irrigation tech and now our mechanic, Jim has seen and done quite a bit in his tenure here. I for one feel very lucky to have him on our team as he is one the of the smartest guys on the course. Jim has really pitched in and helped us out quite a bit on the course this spring and it really shows out on the course. I know one day he is going to have to retire, but until then we are all grateful for his service. Jim, thanks for everything you do for us day in and day out!