WSU - Divots - Thank You

Thank you to the Washington State Univerisyty golf team for coming out yesterday and volunteering their time for the afternoon to fill divots on all the fairways and rough.

Over the winter when the turf is not growing the golf course gets a lot o traffic and beat up.  So this recovery time in the spring is important and I appreciate the college team putting forth their effort in helping it recover faster.  Thank You WSU.

Rolling - spring conditions

This time of year in the spring we always see a different condition on our greens. I roll greens about 1-2 times a week, and mow once a week.

The greens are firm, fast, and not as receptive as some would like. People may feel this firmness and receptiveness comes from rolling, I can confidently say that there is so many numerous university research studies out there showing that rolling does not compact a green or firm it up. A lightweight roller merely smoothes out the surface. It does add speed to the greens, and that is the downside this time of the year, but I feel the smoothness that we get is worth the speed.  Hence why I only roll once a week.

The reason for the firmness and receptiveness is the lack of growth, traffic on the dormant turf all winter, and compacted conditions from winter play. Right now each turf plant is very thin and "spindly".  Once the turf starts to actively grow, we will see the leaf tissue absorb water and nutrients, causing it to expand and grow, giving the greens and fairways a more full appearance. Then the greens will have a softer and lush feel, not be as fast, and be more receptive to golf shots. It is just this time of the year when things are so beat down, extremely thin, and fine leaf tissue. As apposed to our growing season when we have more succulent and a fuller turf canopy. 

It is one of the challenges with different seasons, and exciting times when we try to produce consistent putting conditions even though the turf plants present a variety of conditions and variables to us.

Spring timing on irrigation and growth

Annual comparisons are always interesting on critical agronomic occurrences.  So far this spring has been cooler but drier than last year.

Last night I ran complete irrigation on all areas of the golf course for the first time, last year that occurred on April 19, a month earlier this year.  Last year at this time we had gotten 3.6 inches of rain the month of March, so far this year we are at .35 for March.  Also, the numerous windy days has not helped us retain moisture.  The irrigation will start to soften up greens allowing them to hold more shots.

So far the golf course has started to green-up but the turf is not actively growing.  With our soil conditions we see green-up around 43-45 degrees F on soil temperatures, but don't see growth until about 48 degrees.  This year we have had many days with our high soil temp being 44-48, but very few days around the 50 degree mark.   

It looks like next week will be warmer and hopefully we will start to get some more growth.

Traffic on turf

Here is a very good example of why I talk about traffic all winter on the dormant turf.

This on 18 tee where we did that drainage project this winter, and had the area roped off forcing all the carts over to the left side.  You can see where all the carts drove is greening up and coming out of dormancy a lot slower than the area that did not have cart traffic. 

A great example of why I stress to scatter cart traffic, do not drive where the cart in front of you drove, and the imapct it has on the condition of our golf course come spring.

Filling the irrigation system

Yesterday and today we have started to fire up the irrigation system. 

 

 

It is a 3 day process of very slowly pumping water into the lines, and an even slower more cautious process for us due to the age of our pipe in the ground.  As the water begins to fill the lines, the air is compressed, so we create many exit "relief" points as we fill.  We also use heads, as in the picture above, to bleed air off the system. 

 

It is a slow gradual process because a lot of damage and water hammer can be created if you fill the system to fast. 

 

To me, it always signifies the start to the golf season.   This is the same week that we filled the irrigation system last year.  We will probably actually irrigate sooner this year because of the dry and windy spring we are having so far.  I always fill the system early to detect any leaks or problems before we actually need to run irrigation, but this year I see us running as soon as the system is operational.



Greens growth pattern - Spring

A very interesting growth pattern occurs on our greens in the spring because they are a combination of Bentgrass and Poa Annua.  Many people ask me why some parts look "shaggy" and others are not?

Early in the spring when the turf is just coming out of dormancy, the bentgrass on the greens starts to green up sooner and starts grow faster than the poa annua plants.  This picture shows certain plants are elongating and growing while others look "shorter".  The longer leaf tissue is Creeping Bentgrass and the shorter tissue is Poa.  For about the next 3 weeks we will see areas on the greens that are actively growing (bentgrass) and areas that appear to be "sunken", that is the poa that is very slow and suppressed to come out of dormancy and does not react well to the cooler weather.  This is why bentgrass is the desirable specie on putting greens.  Poa annua is very week in the cooler weather during spring and fall, it is not tolerable to tough winters when it is snow or ice covered, more susceptible to winter diseases, and most importantly for us, it does not stand up in extreme heat conditions during the summer months of July and August.  Hence it has acquired the description of babysitting greens during the cold icy winters, and the hot stressful summers.  

This is a very difficult time to keep the greens smooth because of the different types of grass growing at different rates in the spring.  Also, you will see different varieties of poa that grow at different rates.  Right now there are many spots on the greens that have a different color, about 20-30, each of those "patches" resemble a different type of poa.  They all come out of dormancy, green-up, and start growing at different rates.  

All of this makes spring time very challenging, but exciting for us on the golf course, as we try to get the entire green as uniform and consistent as possible.  We achieve this via plant growth regulators, grooming, and rolling; all to be discussed in future blogs.

First mowing of the Year

As a friend and superintendent that I worked for as an assistant used to tell me, "There is nothing like the smell of fresh cut grass the first time in the spring. If you ever loose that love as a golf course superintendent then it is time to find a new career." Always my favorite time of the year and chills come over your body as you know it is the start of another golf season.

This week we mowed fairways for the first time this year.  Approaches have been mowed twice, greens three times, and tees once.  We also mowed rough for the first time today.

Things are greening up and just starting to grow.  Enjoy the nice spring weather and the golf season is getting started.

Tee - Sand Caddies

The maintenance staff has built seed/sand bottle holders for the par 3 tees.  These are to replace the old pails that use to be on the tee.  These new "sand caddies" will protect the sand and seed from rain and irrigation, make them easier to use, and look better than our old buckets.

The bottles have been labeled and marked for tees only because the seed on tees is bentgrass, whereas the seed on fairways and rough is Kentucky bluegrass.  Meaning these bottles are meant to be used only on tee boxes and please do not take them in your cart for use on the rest of the golf course.  These new bottles should substantially decrease our wasted material, and help the sand and seed from getting wet.

Irrigation Wire Pulling

All of the irrigation improvements for this winter have been installed now.  The last step was pulling the new irrigation wires from the heads back to the irrigation satellites so they can run automatically.

Here you can see we started where our irrigation trench of new pipe and heads stopped and are pulling the new wires back toward the irrigation clock.

 

 

Wires being rolled out by Colby and Ryan getting ready to pull them into the ground.





The reason for the need of addition to our irrigation system is mainly due to the lack of proper spacing on our current heads.  We will discuss many facets about our irrigation system throughout the next few months.  When the system was installed back in the early 1970's, there was not the precision, technology capability, and need for accuracy that we have today.  Our heads are placed on 90 ft spacing, in some areas this spacing is the correct 90 ft to the next head, other areas it is 120 ft, and in some cases it is 140 ft to the next head.  This leads to inadequate coverage between the heads and thus the dry spots appear in the summer months when it gets hot.  We added heads in the worst areas to improve the coverage of our system.

New Equipment has Arrived

All of the discussions, research, analyzing, negotiating, and communication for the new equipment came to fruition last week as our equipment package was delivered.

Thank you to the membership approval for replacement of our main key 20 peices of equipment.  We ended up selecting majority John Deere equipment with a few peices of Toro.  All together we have 68 peices of equipment at the maintnance facility, and we replaced 20 of the 68.  So it wasn't the majority of our fleet, but it was the main equipment that we use on a daily basis like our fairway mowers, rough mowers, greens, tee, and approach mowers, utility vehicles, heavy duty vehicles, sprayer, and our transporting maintenance carts.  We are excited to see the conditioning of the golf course that we can deliver with this new equipment.

It was a matter of our aging fleet truly catching up on us with repair and maintenance costs and extended beyond the life expectancy of the equipment.  I converted the hours on each peice over to miles on a car and our rough mower had 535,000 miles on it, our greens mowers had 485,000 and 465,000 miles on them, and the utility vehicles where in the range of 384,000 - 554,000 miles.  Life expectancy on most golf course equipment is 200,000 - 300,000 miles, due to the harsh environment they operate in (constant wet grass), operating full throttle under a constant work load, and hauling or towing the majority of the time.  We had 4 peices of equipment that had serious breakdowns at the end of the season last year, and the repair cost on those items were greater than the cost of a new peice of equipment.  We can feel good that our mechanical service over the years allowed us to get beyond life expectancy out of our old equipment, as several of the peices leaving here had to be loaded onto the trailer with a tractor and chain.

Just like your own vehicles, farm equipment, or any tools you buy, it is amazing on the engineering improvements this new equipment has undergone, but also the price tag that is associated with it.  Our new rough mower was $72,500, the fairway mowers are $54,000 a peice, greens mowers are $32,000, and a utility cart is $7,500.  We did select all demo units that were 2012 models, and have a range from 2-80 hours on them.  This helped considerably in the bottom line.

 

We are now completly going through cleaning and organizing the facility, creating parking spots for each peice, and setting up our management plan and maintenance schedule for the new fleet.

An exciting week at LGCC.