Shade Patterns

The photos above show how shade effects turf in the winter as much as the summer.  The fairways are the 1st,8th,12th and 15th.  These fairways struggled last year with the heat and moisture and it is evident why.  Here the course is almost snow free except for these areas, which shows we have weaker turf in these areas due to the lack of sunlight and this is why these areas may struggle when it is hot in the summer.  Aggressive tree removals are needed in these areas.

Put Away the Shovels and Grab the Squeegees

Okay, we cleaned the snow off the greens on Sunday.  On Monday and today the ice melted down and now it is critical to get any standing water off the greens before Wednesday night and Thursday morning.  The good news is it is a one day cold snap and hopefully all of our hard work has paid off.
The greens look in good condition with no snow mold or ice damage so far.

Melt That Snow and Ice!!!

What a day, almost 60 degrees.  Here the crew is manually removing ice from the 10th green and opening up channels for the water to run off before the short term freeze comes in on Thursday.  In spots there is little to no ice and in others we have 3-4", mainly where the water drains off the green.  While this is labor intensive, it allows us to get the poa much needed oxygen.

Snow Removed From Greens

The past 2 days, we started removing snow from the greens.  Mainly the low parts of the greens were cleaned so water can run easily off the greens with the warm weather we will see today and tomorrow.  On some greens there was between a 1/2" to 1" of ice and it has been about 30 days of ice cover, which for poa is pushing the envelope.  We will spend the day tomorrow keeping the green fronts clear and we will also squeegee any water that cannot get off the greens before the temperatures drop drastically on Wednesday night.

Planning for the Future

Despite the 2' of snow on the ground, we made a road to get free fill in to the fescue area by the old 12th tees.  This dirt will be used to build our future practice area and driving range and we will also use it to screen off the practice area from the 12th tees.  If we wait any longer, the ground will be thawed and will not be able to get trucks in here.

Water Main Break Repaired

With all the cold and snowy weather this winter, water pipes have been breaking on a regular basis.  We were not immune to this as following the latest snow storm, the 8" cast iron fire suppression line cracked right inside the cinder block wall where the water meters and shutoffs are by the parking lot.  The water ran for a good 24 hours until we could isolate the pipe and United Water could figure out the problem.  Here you can see the company repairing the pipe which was about 6' down.
We are much more prepared if this were to happen again.

It Has Been A Long Winter

There is no question that this has been a long winter.  We had some decent weather right before Christmas to start getting ready to remove the bunker sand from some of our newer bunkers but since, we have had cold and snowy weather.  We have not gotten any significant work done on the course this winter because we have been dealing with snow cover or frozen ground for almost 2 months.  Come this spring we will be extremely busy getting all the little projects done that we were hoping to get done this winter.
How healthy will our turf be come spring?  That leaves a lot to be determined over the next few weeks.  We had some very iffy weather back in January where we had rain and light snow and 50 degrees followed by a temperature drop of over 45 degrees in almost 12 hours.  All the puddles that sat on greens from the rain the day before froze solidly when temps did not get out of the teens for a few days.  Plants can die if they take up water and then freeze and we are hoping that was not the case.  We will be keeping an eye on turf when the snow starts to melt to see how we fared this winter on greens.  Snow mold is going to be another issue and I am confident our greens and tees will be fine, but our fairways and roughs will most likely have snow mold with the prolonged snow cover.  This is more of an unsightly spring disease and usually grows out come May when temperatures start to warm up and grass can start growing normally.  Following a difficult winter like it has been, we can only hope for a warm and dry spring to allow grass to start growing normally.  As snow melts and we can get out to monitor turf, we will update our findings on the blog.