(Grass) Growing Pains

Maybe it was the late opening or maybe it's that the grass is still growing like crazy, but the start to the 2013 golf season has been exceptionally busy.  It's almost as if we've been squeezing six weeks of work into a three-week timeframe, but we are glad that reinforcements (in the form of summer employees) have begun arriving.  Overall, we are very happy with the course conditions, and we'll be even happier when the last of the winter damage finally heals in.  Last week, we expedited the recovery process by transplanting healthy plugs from the chipping green into some of the more concentrated areas of injury.  The good news is that the affected spots have been largely filling in with creeping bentgrass, which should help in future winters.

Otherwise, the big news of the spring has been the decommisioning of the hillside lift that has been transporting golfers from the 9th green to the 10th tee for decades.  To say that this saga has been a nightmare for Chad and me would be an understatement, and although there will be no lift in the immediate future, we are at least relieved to be moving forward.  We are going to act as quickly as possible to remove the exisiting lift and to get the old track line paved.

Last week, you may have noticed that we removed a couple of trees.  The old shagbark hickory that has affected many shots on the right side of hole four had been rapidly declining over the past few years, and this year, it only had two branches that were still alive.  We will be planting two trees--a maple and an oak--in its place.  The other tree that we took down was a medium-sized ash tree between holes 12 and 13.  This ash tree had very quickly developed a large split and was an imminent safety hazard.  Our resident nurseryman, Howard, has selected an elm as the replacement tree for this site.

Speaking of trees, we occassionally discuss the competing impacts that they have on the health of our turf, and nowhere is this more true than on our ninth green.  We will oftentimes find small tree roots when moving the hole location on this green, but the root (pictured below) that Omar discovered while repairing the back left sprinkler takes the grand prize to date.

Aside from the morning shade issues and the shelf of rocks that the ninth green is built on, these tree roots are one of the reasons why this green is our most finicky.  Two trees to the left of the green are on the chopping block, and we hope to have them removed in the near future.

It looks as if it's going to be a tumultuous week of weather, and 0.85" of rain has already fallen this morning.  But, we hope that you are able to dodge the rain clouds and get some golf in this week.  It's hard to believe that June is just a few days away...
  

 

Busy Weeks

The past two weeks have been a blur, but we've been able to accomplish a lot on the golf course.  This week's accomplishments include fertilizing the greens and tees and aerifying the fairways, and on this cold, rainy day, we can exhale.

Fairway aerification went very well, and the delayed spring actually helped us out tremendously.  Without leaves on the trees, the aerification cores that were pulled on the back 9 dried relatively quickly and evenly, and we were able to grind them up with very little soil left behind.  Usually, the tree leaves keep the cores on the south sides from fully drying and that was not the case this year.  We were also fairly fortunate to dodge the showers on Monday, and the dry, windy conditions made for perfect core grinding and blowing.  The front 9 fairways were solid-tine aerified for the first time ever, and because this process doesn't bring up any soil, it's almost hard to tell that anything was done to them.  Next year, our plans are to solid tine the back 9 and hollow tine the front 9.

In the coming weeks, we will use small diameter, solid tines to aerify the greens.  We used these once or twice during the season last year, and after rolling the greens, you will hardly notice that that we did anything.  This year, our normal greens core aerification is scheduled to begin on September 29.

Last week, the hillside between holes 14 and 15 dried out enough that we were able to remove the enormous oak tree that toppled over earlier this spring.  Almost all of this tree's major roots were rotten, and the inside of the first three feet of the trunk also had a two-foot diameter section of decay.  From our best estimation (the rings were rather close together), the tree was 130 years old.

With the warmer weather, the greens that suffered winter damage are healing by the day, and we are happy with the progress that they are making.  We will continue to monitor them and take any action necessary to get them fully-healed as quickly as possibly.  Chad dusted off the slit seeder this week and dropped bentgrass seed in the fairway areas that suffered winter injury and these areas will disappear as the soil temperatures allow the already-present Poa annua seeds and newly-added bentgrass seeds to germinate.  Chad also seeded any thin rough areas this week.

All told, it has been a very productive few weeks, and before long, our summer seasonal workers will begin filtering in and the real chaos will begin.

Cold April Showers

If the old adage proves true, we're in store for an abundance of May flowers.  It's no secret that all of Wisconsin has been stuck in a cold, wet weather pattern, and the remainder of this week unfortunately looks no different.  After three nice days, we're in store for a few more inches of rain.  Not counting today's precipitation, the area has officially received 3.97" of rain in April, and the average rainfall for the entire month is 3.4".  It looks as if we're on track to double the monthly normal average.  As far as temperatures go, the average temperature of March was 26.6 degrees (34 is normal), and to this point in April the average has been 39.8 degrees (43.8 is the to-date normal).  All of the aforementioned data has added up to a soggy golf course and turf that is in no hurry to grow very actively. 

However, the course has been officially opened for the year, and it was nice to see a fair amount of golfers enjoying yesterday's beautiful afternoon.  The April 16 opening tied for the third latest opening on record (since 1973) and was exactly two weeks after the average opening date of April 2.

Although it has been a difficult spring to get a lot accomplished on the course, the course is slowly coming together.  With the exception of the wooded area between holes 14 & 15, the entire course has been raked, and we have been working on picking up the many piles.  All greens and fairways 1-10 have been mowed, and we also dimpled, seeded, and topdressed the greens that suffered from some winter injury.

As many have probably seen, a very large oak tree on the right side of hole 14 fell last week, and it ripped off a few adjacent limbs on the way down.  Unbeknownst to us, this tree was rotting away belowground, and it happened to fall in an area that has made cleanup impossible to this point.  With the slope and wetness of the downed tree's location, we will have to wait until conditions dry before we can get our heavy equipment to it.



My small frame provides scale for the very old, very large, uprooted oak tree.

As the weather allows, course supplies will continue to filter from the shop to the course, and we will begin tackling the remaining normal spring projects that are needed to get the course up to par.  Hopefully, the weather will start to cooperate and that the golf season will get in full swing before too long.

Winter Wrap-up

Now that the snow and ice have melted in most places, we have a pretty good idea on how the rollercoaster winter of 2013 treated the golf course, and for the most part, the news is good.  The vast majority of the putting greens have little to no damage, but there are a few that will likely have some winter injury.  However, even though it has been relatively warm over the past week, we won't know for sure until the turf starts actively growing.  Some of the Poa annua looks off-color and dinged, but when we inspect the lower portions of the plants, the newly-forming leaves look quite healthy.

Eight green appears to have suffered the most injury, and it is likely that some if it (20%) will be dead.   This green suffers from poor drainage and what does drain goes directly towards the large evergreen that shades it to the south.  Thus, the melted water refreezes in shaded areas that comprise the middle and back left quadrant of the green.  Otherwise, the greens that concern us at this point are on holes 10, 13, and 15.  While this isn't great news, we are happy to report that it doesn't appear as if temporary greens will be necessary on any hole, and the damage is not nearly as extensive as it has been in the past.  That being said, we will do everything possible to get them 100% healthy as quickly as Mother Nature allows.

Today, we removed the covers from 3, 11, and 17 greens, and they did their jobs.  Despite the extreme shade that each of these greens receive, the covers/foam kept the ice from damaging the turf.  Periodically throughout the winter, we would also use backpack blowers to stimulate air exchange under the covers.  All in all, we are very happy with how the covers performed this year.

The rest of the course appears to be relatively unscathed from the winter's wrath.  Even the areas by 3 green and 6/7 fairways that had very large, unintended ponds on them fared quite well.  We like to think that the pumping that we did on hole 3 helped the cause, and even though we'll never know if it made a difference, it certainly didn't hurt.

What appears to be the biggest casualty of winter is the koi population in the pond.  Three years ago, someone discarded a couple of unwanted koi, and in the time since, our couple of fish turned into a few hundred.  Combine that large population with a small pond with a maximum depth of 5 feet, and what you get are a lot of dead koi.  Once the pond thaws, we will have the unenviable task of getting them out before they stink up the place.

Despite a very wet and sloppy course, we have been carefully working our way around the property this week to take down the snow fence that wasn't iced in and to rake the billion of sticks that came down over winter into piles to be collected later.  To some extent, we rake under every one of the trees, but some (oaks and ashes) are definitely messier than others.  By the end of today, most of the front nine will be raked.  We will probably start cleaning the back nine next week, but because the majority of this nine lies on a north-facing slope, it thaws much more slowly than the southern-facing front nine.

At this point in the update, you're probably wondering when the course is going to be opening.  There are two basic parameters that need to be met before the course can safely open:  frost-free soil and actively-growing turf.  Without these, it's a muddy mess as it is right now.  Our best guess is that the course won't open before April 15, but with high temperatures forecasted to be pretty consistently in the 50s over the next few days, conditions could improve rapidly, especially if this weekend's potential rain drives the frost from the ground.  Rest assured that we will have the course open as soon as possible and that we are as anxious to get the golf season underway as you are.  As updates regarding the course condition and/or opening develop, we will be sure to keep you informed.

Snow Removal

This week, the decision was made to remove snow from the greens.  Since early February, they had been encapsulated in ice, and we were getting close to the 60-day threshold under which Poa annua can generally survive under ice.  The snow depth varied across the course and even on different spots on the same green, but it was generally 8" deep.  The back of number two green had 2' of snowcover thanks to the bowl that it sits in.

We found anywhere from 1-6" of ice on the greens, which was more than we were expecting.  However, now that the snow is gone, the ice has softened, and they are melting quite quickly.  Greens 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10 (those that receive more of the southerly sunlight) are mostly or completely exposed, and although it's still too early to say for sure, we like what we see. 

A few greens have a faint hint of the distinctive odor that accompanies winterkill, and of the more exposed greens, 7, 8, and 10 are the most likely to have some damage.  Luckily, it looks nothing like the winterkill that we've seen in recent years.  We will have a better idea about the status of the rest of the greens once more snow and ice melts, but until they start actively growing, the best that we can do is make educated guesses.

Today, we walked to each green to make sure that the water was draining off of the surfaces, and where it wasn't, channels were cut to allow the meltwater to flow.

Below are some pictures of the snow removal process.

We almost lost Omar in the drift on 2 green.



Getting started on the putting green.  After the first pass, it seems as if it will take hours to clear the green, but most were completed in 45 minutes.

The putting green before...

...during...

...and after snow removal.  They would have made nice ice skating rinks.

Even on a relatively cool, cloudy Wednesday, much of 5 green melted between 8 am (above) and 2:30 pm (below).  This green was cleared of snow on Monday.