Mulched Areas

Over the last few weeks, our maintenance crew has been trying something new around the course. We have always had these areas on the course that are somewhat out of play but also will get the occasional golf ball landing in them.  These areas are hard to grow grass in because of either no sunlight or no sprinkler heads in the area for the irrigation that it would need.  We decided to make these areas into mulched beds.  We put up some edging around the area that we wanted to mulch that will hopefully keep the mulch in place throughout the year and also keep people from driving through these ares.  The mulch looks nice and you can also still play your golf ball off of it if you happen to hit it in there.  We have already had a few comments on what we have done so far and everything has been positive.  Here are a couple of pictures of the before and after.

Please help us take care of these areas by keeping carts away from these beds.  We have also started some sodding projects around the course.  These areas have stakes and ropes around them so please helps us keep this sod alive by staying out of the roped areas as well.

Collar Aerification

   We are back!  I haven't been doing a very good job keeping up with blog post over the past year.  Seems like once we get into our busy season it was forgotten about.  I have had several people ask about what happened to our blog and I am proud to say that we are going to start being more consistent with our blogging again.    

   Spring is well under way and our bermudagrass is finally starting to show signs of life.  Over the last two weeks the golf course has really started to green up.  As always, our shorter cut grass (collars, tees and fairways) are always to first to get going.  To help with our green up, we decided to start our aerification process this week.  We started today on our collars and will begin our tees and fairways tomorrow.  Our plan was to start everything on Monday but the rain on Sunday forced us to wait till today. This process helps us relieve any compaction and help get some needed air down through the canopy and down to the roots.  Hopefully with it being in the mid-80's on Thursday and some more chances of rain this coming weekend, we can encourage our bermudagrass to start greening up and growing.  

   We will be finished with everything by Friday afternoon and have everything cleaned up by the weekend.  I will post some pictures of our Tee and Fairway process as soon as we get started.  

Brown Patch and Stump Removal

Over that past few weeks we have noticed some cool season brown patch on our putting greens.  This disease is common when you have continuously wet leaf blades of at least 10 hours or so. Cloudy weather, humid nights and dew increase disease severity.  Brown patch is also particularly bad on areas the have been fertilized with excessive nitrogen.  This winter we have been fertilizing more than usual to try and keep the greens growing throughout the winter.  We sprayed a fungicide called Daconil Weather Stik at 4.9oz/m and by the end of the week we had control on the disease.  Attached are some pictures of brown patch that was on our putting green and our assistant superintendent   Craig Robinson spraying  fungicide last week.  We also had Terry Sisco with Sisco Turf Services come in and take care of some stumps we had on the course.  Terry ground down 27 stumps in about 8 hours and really cleaned up the course.  Attached are some pictures and also a video of Terry in action on #11.  Terry will be back on the property next month to deep tine our greens again during aerification.  

Cart Traffic

It's a new year and I thought I would start it off by talking about our cart traffic on the golf course.  You have probably noticed that we have put up some ropes and stakes again around the course.  We felt like we had to do something to stop the traffic around greens and tees or we would regret it come spring time. Please help the maintenance department  by staying on the cart path around all tees and greens.  We are cart path only on all par 3's.  Below is an article that I would like for you to take the time and read.  Thank you for your support in this matter.

The article is written by Bud White, Director of the USGA's Green Section's Mid-Continent Region is titled:

Buddy Up: Reduce single rider golf cart use to improve turf health and quality.

http://gsr.lib.msu.edu/article/white-buddy-11-30-12.pdf

Fall Aerification

Last week, as many of you know, we completed our fall aerification.  This fall we pulled out a 1/2in x 5in core on a 2.5in spacing.  Our process went like it usually does with one exception.  This was the first time that we had a greens roller around aerification time and it made a huge difference!  After the fertilizer and sand was put down, we used our roller to smooth the surface before we drug the sand it.  This process allowed us to get all the holes filled with sand and we didn't have to come back a couple of days later by hand to fill in what we missed.  As far as fertility went we put down an 5-4-5 complete fertilizer which is going to give us about .40# of N, .30#P and .40#K.  Next we put down some Gypsum to help with any compaction and sodium issues that we might have.  Lastly we put down a poly coated 0-0-50 to help with our low Potassium levels in our greens.  The poly coat is a type of slow release that will get us 180 days of slow release Potassium.  The greens are healing in nicely and were mowed for the first time on Monday.  We will continue to mow and roll them this week and I expect them to be rolling great by the weekend.  As always, thank you for your patience while we perform this important process.

\

Greens Spiking

Yesterday we took advantage of another closed Monday and spiked greens.  Spiking greens is just a less aggressive way to aerify.  The spikes go about 1 to 1.5 inches into the ground.  Although we aren't getting 4 to 5 inches down like we would with our procore, we still get great benefits out of this. Anytime you can open up the canopy and relieve some compaction is a good thing.  After we spiked we sprayed a product called Penecal which is a wetting agent combined with calcium that will help flush any high sodium that we might have in our greens.  Behind the spray we topdressed and then watered heavily.

Here are some pictures of the spiking process

 

Insect Damage

For those of you who have been out playing in this extreme heat, you may have noticed some damage on #4 green.  Although the damage is very minimal, it is affecting the way the green plays.  The insect we have it a short-tailed cricket.  This cricket will come out late in the evening and feed on our bentgrass green.  The damage isn't coming from the feeding, it's coming from the hole they burrow into the ground. They leave a large casting on top of the canopy and when we mow or roll over it in the mornings, it looks like a larger ball mark.  We knew something was feeding and burrowing in our green but we didn't know what.  So we used an old trick that many superintendents use.  We mixed up some water and lemon joy dishwashing soap, came out early in the morning when they were still active and poured the mixture on one of the castings.  Within minutes, the soap floated a cricket up out of the hole.  After further investigating, we knew it was a short-tailed cricket.  We have ordered some insecticide and should get this problem taken care of quickly.  #4 green might play a little rough for the next week or so but should be back to normal by the end of the month.

These are the castings we find in the mornings  and a picture of the crickets.