Greens Aerification

On Tuesday of this week we went out and aerified our greens with 1/4 inch side eject tines.  With all of the rain that we have been getting this month, it is very important to open our bentgrass greens up as often as we can.  This allows our greens to "breathe" and get important air down into our root system.  Over the summer, we try to do this process once a month to help with the heat of the summer and it also helps with any excessive compaction that we might get with all of our equipment being on our greens (greens roller, mowers, topdressers, sprayers, etc).  Tuesday we did pull a small 1/4 inch core when usually we just use a solid tine.  With the extreme rainfall and cooler temps, we went ahead and pulled some material out that will also help with any algae spots that we are starting to see on our greens from the rain.  We followed up this aerification on Wednesday with a fungicide application that focused on Algae and patch diseases.  Over the next 4 months, we will be spraying some type of fungicide every 14-21 days to help prevent any diseases that we might get due to the heat and humidity.  On the bright side, it looks like the rain might be coming to an end on Saturday.  We are hoping for a dry week next week so we can get some things mowed out for The Gusher coming up next weekend.  

Greens Edging and Topdressing

Before this last rain came in, we were busy doing some things around the course.  On Monday we worked on getting our greens edged.  This process helps with keeping the edge of our greens between the Bentgrass and Bermuda crisp and helps keep any Bermuda grass runners from contaminating our greens. This is something that we try to do at least every 2 weeks to maintain that edge the way we want it.  Our process is usually marking the edge with a dotted line, edging with our walk behind edger and blowing off any debris that the edging leaves.

On Tuesday, we topdressed our greens with a light layer of sand and also fertilized our collars in preparation for the coming rain.  Topdressing greens is a very important part of what we do here.  This process helps us keep a firm and smooth surface.  We try to do this every 10 to 14 days.  All depending on the weather and how much growth we are getting at the time.  We will topdress the green, broom, and water.  We have two 5 foot walking brooms that our crew use during this process.  Brooming is important because it helps get the sand down into the canopy where it belongs so our mowers don't pick up more than they have too.  Using these walk brooms keeps us from having to get a cart on our greens which keeps the stress down and eliminates 99% of any bruising that might occur.  Attached are some pictures that we took of these practices.

Rain, Rain and more Rain

This spring has been a wet one to say the least.  It seems like as soon as we get dry enough to do some mowing and cleaning up it rains again.  We are trying our best to keep things maintained but we would also ask for your patience as we have to wait for things to dry before we can get our heavy mowers out there to get things done. With another 1.5 inches last night, our golf course is once again saturated.  Please continue to follow our cart path rules and directional markers.  Anytime you can stay on the cart path during this extreme wet period please do.  We don't need anymore tire marks/ruts in our wet areas.  If you haven't been out in a while, I have attached a picture of our markers that are on most of our approaches.  Please, when you approach these markers return to the cart path.  

Burning Brush

This past week you might have thought that it was a slow week for us here at maintenance, when actually it was a very productive one.  With snow being on the ground for 4 out of the 5 days and light winds, we took advantage of the opportunity and burned our brush piles out at #17.  These limbs and debris are from our routine trimming we do around the course throughout the year.  During this past week, we were able to get everything burned that we needed to.  The snow allowed us to have a bigger fire than we normally would have which in return, lets us push bigger piles in with our tractor instead of just hand feeding it.  We ended up getting a years worth of trimming burned up in just a few days.

Also, please remember that we will be aerifying greens 2 times this spring.  We will be deep tining on March 17th and then turning around and doing our traditional aerification on Monday, March 23rd. As long as the weather continues to stay warm, our holes should be healed in 7-10 days.

Pre-emergent Application

As spring is approaching, we decided that this week would be a good week to start our spring pre-emergent application.  Our area of emphasis for this week were clubhouse grounds, collars and some of our creek banks.  One area on the course that we wanted to clean up this year were our creek banks around our maintained turf.  Areas like #3 approach, #13 approach, #14 approach, etc, are areas that last year might have gotten a little out of hand when it comes to weeds.  We are hoping that with a spraying program that these areas are a little bit more "maintained" this year.  These areas are not something that we plan on weed eating every week, but hopefully with these areas weed free, you will find it more enjoyable when you play your round.  We also sprayed our collars this week.  We finished those on Wednesday before the 40mph winds and cold front hit.  We sprayed 2 laps around each green which will help with any poa annua that has popped up in the last month.  You should see some activity from these applications over the next couple of weeks.  In all of our spray tanks we have a pre-emergent herbicide, roundup, and a 2,4-d of some kind to take care of any weeds that are in these areas. Next week we plan on spraying Tees, fairways and surrounds.   Below are some pictures of the week to hopefully give you some insight on how we made these applications.

Ball Mark Repair

Over the last few months, I have been noticing an increase in ball marks that aren't repaired. Although play has slowed down during these winter months, it is still very important to repair your ball marks on our putting greens. During this time of year, our bentgrass putting surfaces will freeze during the cold winter nights and thaw out during the heat of the day.  This process tends to make our greens softer than they usually are during the peak growing season.  With the softer greens, it causes the mark from your golf ball to be much deeper, which makes it even more important to repair. Ball marks that aren't repaired can take 2 to 3 weeks to properly heal.   Repairing these ball marks will allow you and your fellow members to enjoy the smoothest playing surface possible.

If some of you are unsure how to properly repair a ball mark, I have attached a video from the USGA for some helpful tips.  As always, if there are any questions, please feel free to contact me.


https://www.usga.org/turf/articles/video/repairingballmarks.html

Greens Spiking and Wetting Agent

    Yesterday we took advantage of another closed Monday and spiked greens.  Spiking greens is 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 and add oxygen to the root zone is a good thing.  Behind the spiking, we used our greens roller to roll everything back smooth.  We followed our roller by making a wetting agent application. Wetting agents help keep consistent moisture across the entire green and helps drive water through the soil so our greens don't stay to wet.  Below are some pictures and a few videos of our process yesterday.