Carts.....the Necessary Evil

 Most of the wear and tear at many golf courses are from carts and maintenance equipment.  While carts are a necessary evil, they do come at a cost.  Signs, stakes and the labor to move them.  Increased fertility and water and even aeration to alleviate compaction.  Plus the constant plugging or sodding of funneled traffic areas becomes problematic.

This picture is the new path by 9 green.  This entire area is new.  We have directional signs to lead carts to the path, but what happens is carts will drive parallel to the path between the bunker and the path.  If we do not put these stakes up, the thinning here will become dirt and hardpan.  The same thing is by most greens and tees.  Not only are the stakes expensive, they are unsightly and a pain to keep moving when we mow.  I try and stay on my guys to keep all 4 tires on the path when on them and sometimes they forget.  If we can all obey cart signs and utilize the paths properly the golf course will look and play much better.

Wildflowers Served Their Purpose

 

The wildflowers we seeded to the left of 1 tee have done a great job hiding the large area of disturbance that was seeded to fescue in April.  My fear was having this large expanse looking thinned out and weedy all summer, especially from the pro shop, clubhouse and parking lot.  I decided to seed an annual wildflower mix in to give it a quick cover and help support the new fescue and bluestem below.  We have had flowers monthly from June until now, but had a small window of several weeks in September before these Cosmos flowered.  Most felt it looked like weeds and unkept until this happened.  I have extensive experience with wildflowers from my Audubon days at Edgewood and I can tell you they look great in years 1 and 2 but become very difficult to keep looking great year after year, especially when we try and introduce new annual seeds.  The more you aerate or rototill the soils for new seed, the more weed seeds you bring up and then it is a difficult balance.  Enjoy these beauties for the next few weeks!

Maturing Every Month

 

Now that the weather has turned in our favor we can push the new fairway expansions to fill in and start to resemble our other fairways.  Most of this expansion currently is mainly poa with some bent mixed in.  We killed off most of the rough grasses that were there when we scalped last year.  While this is looking so much better, we have to be prepared for next July and August when high temperatures and precipitation can set it back again.  The key now is to aerate, topdress, fertilize and next season make sure we keep these new areas sprayed up.

Bunker Strategies

 

The new bunker styles have been met with overwhelming approval from the membership.  The maintenance on the other hand will need to be tweaked.  It has been a learning curve for our staff dealing with an engineered sand and a concrete liner.  Our old bunkers were firm 90% of the time, especially after rain events.  The new bunkers are softer more frequent and if they are firm, it only lasts for a day or so.  This is a combination of faster draining liners, more coarse sand and the weather.  

When rain does not frequently occur, we have to rely on irrigation to help add moisture to the sand.  Depending on time of year, we try to avoid any unnecessary watering.  We do not have dedicated bunker irrigation but we do have green perimeter and surround heads.  Running these, will help the bunkers but soften the surrounds.  Again, a learning curve.

Recently we replaced our metal spring leaf rakes with a hard plastic leaf rake.  We cut off the end tines on each side and have noticed a big improvement.  Less troughs through the bunkers and we actually flip the rake upside down to do the edges.  When it is wet, we can return to the metal leaf rakes, but for now it seems these rakes are doing the trick.

Of course it is up to the individual to do it properly as well, so it is not a perfect solution yet, but we are heading in the right direction.

Fairway Conversion Continues

 This is the new portion of our 9th fairway.  It was scalped down 14 months ago and managed at fairway height since.  There are growing pains associated with doing this, including having the grass get acclimated to the new heights, getting rid of undesirable grasses, having the grass survive hot and wet stretches and finally aerifying and topdressing these new pieces so they match the existing fairway.  The latter will take years to catch up as this area was rough that never received aeration or topdressing or any other significant cultural practices.  The key now is to remove the unwanted rough grasses.  We could not do this during the summer as our fear was having no grass in these areas so we applied an herbicide 2 weeks ago.  You can now see where some of the grasses are affected by the spray and we are hoping our overseeding will help fill in the stressed turf areas.  By next summer these expansions will look and match much better, however we will still need to baby them along for another season.

Roll With the Punches

 

A superintendents worst fear.  Not much you can do, most of the time it is a sign of aging equipment and a major overhaul is needed on hoses and fittings.  Once you see this, it will not matter what you do, the grass will be dead.

Our staff immediately jumped into action.

By 4:30 most of the effected turf was removed and replaced.  

We are fortunate to have a staff that will do whatever it takes to protect the golf course.

The Other Side of Too Much Rain

 

Besides poor playing conditions, prolonged wet spells also create more issues.  With the constant rainfall, high humidity and warm temperatures, the grass is growing like a weed.  One or two missed days of mowing, usually creates more maintenance.  

If we mow roughs in the morning hours, it creates a mess to clean up.  The top picture not only shows how much rough blowing we need to do after the mow, we also need to clean cart paths or else the clippings get packed into the stone.  By blowing the paths, we also blow stone into the rough.

The past few weeks, we have not had to do any watering, but most of our staff have been on blowers cleaning up the mess left behind, taking away from other items that need attention.