Staffing and Updates

I wanted to give an update on our staffing plan for the season and the current condition of the golf course. 

I am going to approach the season the same as last year, and due to our budget reductions in these trying times for all of golf, I am going to utilize a very small staff in the spring and fall months of March/April and Oct/Nov.  This will allow me to operate with our typical size staff in the summer months, producing the great conditioned product that we all have become accustomed too during our heavy play prime time of the season. 

In the shoulder months with the smaller staff, it will mean that it will take as a little longer to get around to everything.  As you have seen there are weeds coming on in the golf course and the landscape beds need some weed attention.  Also, fairways and rough are not being mowed quit as frequent as the summer months.  We are still getting to all of these items, it just may not be as frequent and detailed as our normal maintenance. 


So for the next 4 weeks, when you see longer turf in the fairways and rough, or more weeds than expected in landscape beds and golf course turf, you will understand that I am trying to conserve labor for the prime summer months.

Greens Update

The greens are really recovering well from aerification, and by the weekend I think they will be putting fairly well.  On Monday,  I went out and put down a second topdressing on greens to top off the aerification holes and ensure each one is full and going to roll smooth. 

The staff has continued brushing and working the sand in.  The cloudy and cooler weather, with the one frost morning, is not helping our soil temperatures and growth, but they are still growing and making progress.  This second topdressing is very important to get them back to the speed and smoothness we are sue to in the summer.

The plan for this week is to get back on the regular mowing and rolling, and then we will see a large improvement in the next 5 days.

Greens Aerification

The maintenance staff has been working very hard this week to complete the aerification of greens.  Here is a look at the 7 step process that we go through for aerifying the greens in the spring and fall.
165 man hours were spent in 2 days to core all the greens.

First cores are pulled.

We used 1/2" hollow tines on 1 1/4" spacing.

Alook after we have pulled cores. I do beleive in aggressive cultural pracitces for the putting surfaces.
  

Then the challenging part of picking up plugs, lots of labor and man hours on shovels and blowers.

The new sweeper is a very good tool to have.  It sweeps up the cores with brushes, collects them in a hopper, and leaves a very clean green surface, decreasing the amount of hand labor we had to perform.

The core sweeper then dumps into a shuffle vehicle to haul the plugs away and maximize the time the sweeper is actually sweepng.

The finished product after cores are collected.

Then the roller to smooth out all tire tracks, foot prints, and leave a smooth green.

The greens are then topdressed with pure sand.  Nobody has ever accussed me of going too lite on the sand.   We applied 45 tons of sand over 90,000 sq ft, putting down about 1 3/4" of sand to fill the holes and to be worked into the turf canopy.

Then the sand is brushed in, irrigation is ran to help work the sand in, and more brushing.

The finished product after 2 days and ready for golf.

People may say why so much sand, the holes are filled and there is a lot left on the surface?  The holes are not actually completely filled.  They have bridged the hole where the upper part is full, but the bottom of the hole is still empty.  This week, the staff will continue to brush and water to work the sand down in the holes.  As the sand is worked down in the holes and the holes become full, then the sand on the surface will disappear.

This aggressive coring practice, heavy amount of sand, and precision of cleaning, rolling, filling every hole, is what allows us to have such firm and smooth putting surfaces come summer.

Thank you the entire staff for a great job over the two long says.

Cart Path Exit Signs

We have put out our directional cart exit signs for the season.

The purpose of these signs it to direct the location where we want golf carts to exit the cart path each day.  When golf carts exact the exact same location day after day, we get those unsightly worn areas along the cart path.  By moving around our traffic, and allowing the turf to recover the following day, then we can have better turf quality throughout our high traffic areas.

Please look for the cart signs and exit the path where they are located and in the direction they are pointing.

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.