Spring Green-up

Things really greened up here last week.  We had most of the week in the mid 50's and night time lows stayed around 45, so the soil temps really increased.  Look at these two pictures taken only 5 days apart.

Mar 3

Mar 6

Irrigation Update

So far everything is going very smoothly on the irrigation additions and improvements on holes 6 and 7. We divided the two holes into two sections, attacking all the sod removal, trenching, pipe and wire installation, and back filling and sodding in the first section as a whole and then we will move onto the the section phase. Lastly will be the satellite installations and pulling of new wires to the old heads that will be staying in the ground.
I was hoping trenching would be nice black dirt, but it turned out to be a rocky battle.

Trenching - tree roots and rocks

Some areas were nice soil and we moved right along

Just a few rocks

Numerous tree roots were another thing we ran into.  This is a great example on how the tree roots on a golf course usually take on a shallow habit because of our high maintenance of irrigation and fertilizing.  These shallow roots then pull nutrients and water from the turfgrass causing stress on the plants.

Look at all the shallow tree roots

A large tree roots growing along the old pipe, bowing up the pipe

Tree roots removed with a chainsaw

Roots encompassing the pipe

Trenches are prepped and pipe installation is ready to begin

Trenches are all prepped, pipe going in

More pipe installation

Now we are in the process of running wires.  Back filling and sodding will start today.

Preparation work for the new satellites

Keeping paths open for golfers to cross trenches

Ladies Amateur Championship coming to Lewiston Country Club in 2014

We had our first walk trough today with the PNGA (Pacific Northwest Golf Association) to prep for the Ladies Amateur and Mid-Amateur Championships that we will be hosting this summer July 7-11.  This is a big event for us to be hosting in the pacific northwest and we are very excited to be selected to host it.   There will be some great ladies golf to watch and a very exciting time agronomically to prep the course.

Touring the course, planning out course set-up

The manual for course prep and playability

Planning meeting with tournament committee, head pro, and food and beverage manager

Stay tuned this summer to see the things that we do to prepare the golf course for an event of this scale.

Very interesting....

Take a look at this picture  -  look at the straight line at 100 yards across the fairway on #2

We have not done any mowing, fertilizing, spraying, or any maintenance on the fairways since November of last year.  This has to be from a fungicide application for snow mold disease that we did around thanksgiving last fall.  Some fungicides have growth regulator effects on the turf, which I like, and we apply these fungicides to certain areas on our fairways that we have mapped over the years as highly susceptible areas.   The turf absorbed the fungicide last fall, sat dormant all winter, and now the rest of the fairway is coming out of dormancy and greening up, but this area is slowed to green-up and come out of dormancy because of the regulator effect.  I have not seen this before, but then this year has been different than most past winters.

Spring is coming

Even though it doesn't feel it today, there are some signs on the golf course that spring is coming.  This week we saw buds popping on the trees for the first time this spring.

Buds opening up on the tree

Up close of trees leafing out

These signs are telling us it won't be long now.

Bent / Poa Combination Greens

We are in the very early stages of the turf waking up.  Minimal visual green-up and no growth yet, but the plants are starting to wake up and starting metabolism.  You can tell that because our mixture of Creeping bentgrass and Poa Annua greens is just starting to become visible.

The bent is darker green and the poa is a lime green / grey color

Up close you can see what appears to be a hiegth difference between the two grasses 

 Spring is always when of the most difficult times to maintain smooth putting surfaces, because the bent will wake up faster and the poa will stay dormant, in a slumber and appear sunken, for a longer period during the cooler days of spring.  Once they are both out of dormancy and fully growing then this growth difference will diminish, but combination greens are a challenge early in the spring. To help offset this difference we will roll greens on a very frequent basis to maintain a smooth surface.

Irrigation Renovation 6 and 7

We are in the process of starting the irrigation renovation on holes 6 and 7.  Currently those holes are severely under irrigated with heads that are spaced 120ft apart with 85ft nozzles.  This leads to all of the dry areas between the rows of heads that we see in the summer.  Also, the current pipe size is too small for the required flow of water for each head, the control system is not wired correctly between the heads and irrigation controller, and the wires and pipe are buried too shallow preventing us from the doing the proper cultivation practices to the turf like aerifying.

We will be removing one row of heads and adding in 4 rows of heads, adding larger pipe sizes, a new irrigation controller, new wiring to all the heads, and pulling new deeper wires to the old heads that will be staying in the ground.

For the next 3 weeks, those two holes will look like a mine field of trenches, holes, rolls of sod, pipe, and wire everywhere.  Please excuse our work as we perform this much needed improvement and take relief while playing golf from all areas under construction.  Please keep your eyes open for areas where carts can cross the open trenches.  Once this project is complete, these two holes will be much improved and all the hard pan dry areas will be gone.

We started by removing the old heads that will be used else where, locating pipes that we will be crossing and tieing into, and measuring and planning out all the new heads.

Removing and capping old heads

Digging up and locating pipes that we will cross - nice 6" tree root growing adjacent to the pipe and pushing it up

    Everything has been laid out, planned, and measured.  Now we are in the process of sod cutting all the trenches and laying back the sod.  Trenching, backfilling and re-sodding the new pipe, heads, and wires will start next week

Sod cutting for the trench

Rolling up sod

More sod trenches and locating pipes

13,000 ft of pipe, 20,000 ft of wires, and 94 heads of varying size will go in the ground over the next 3 weeks.

Stay tuned for frequent updates