What's New and Possible Winter Scenarios

I guess the good news is there is nothing earth shattering to discuss. Most of the snow has all melted except for a very thin layer on the greens surface. The cold weather has caused most of the ground to freeze solid. That usually means there is little opportunity for disease until the spring melt. It also means it could take a while for stuff to get going in the spring since the soil temperature needs to be above 50degrees F (10 degrees C) to get good turf growth. Right now all we can do is look at present conditions and decide if they may impact the turf next spring and try to formulate a plan.

A little FYI: "Winter Kill", the catch all term for dead turf in the spring, can usually be attributed to one or a combination of the following:

1. Disease
2. Crown hydration/dehydration or freeze/thaw cycle
3. Ice
4. Direct Low Temperature Kill

For most situations water needs to be present in one form or another (i.e. liquid or ice) to cause damage to turf. Up to this point, luckily, the greens have had very little water flowing or freezing on the surface.

Another factor contributing to unhealthy turf is the level of the plants reserves. Once spring arrives and the turf begins to grow the severity of damage to the exposed turf from the extreme early winter conditions may be depended upon how much carbohydrates (CHO) the turf was able to store before the temperature dropped. Increased height of cut, fertilizer applications, and a warm ground to keep the soil and roots active all aid in CHO production and storage in the fall. This fall was challenging because of the ill timed snow falls and below normal temperatures affected our fall fertilizing schedule and, as a result, the turf may not have had sufficient opportunity to develop adequate CHO stores.

We have experienced just about every version of the above scenarios that I have laid out at one time or another. Luckily, they have been limited to certain areas and not over the entire golf course. Arrival of winter cause us to change gears but it doesn't stop us from thinking about the turf and what surprises may await us once the snow melts.

Snow and Tarping Greens

With winter looking a little more possible we began to wrap up some loose ends on the golf course. The only real significant thing left was to tarp the greens that are prone to ice damage. First we had to shovel off the skiff of snow that had stuck around before laying down the tarps.Unlike previous years, we left those greens we tarp exposed a bit longer so the ground could freeze. Some information coming out of Alberta suggests laying a tarp before the ground freezes may contribute to a condition called anoxia (lack of oxygen). Up until the spring of 2007 when #6 green was damaged we have never experienced any damage due to covering the greens. The picture above shows the damage from that year which was similar in appearance to greens at other golf courses that were discovered to have anoxic conditions during the winter of 2006. This year we've changed the style of tarp from an impermeable to a tarp with a looser weave that should allow gas exchange but limit water penetration. At present, we have around 2 to 3.5 inches snow throughout the course. This is still not enough to buffer any significant rain event. We will keep an eye on the forecast and try to make the right choices if it looks like rain. I'll keep snow and course conditions updated over the next few weeks but unless things get funky the entries will be short and sweet.

Typical Fall Work

This past week had us scouting, falling, limbing, and removing pine trees infected with Mountain pine beetle and the Western pine beetle.

We had to remove around 65 trees from infected pockets scattered throughout the golf course property. This is amount of trees is similar to previous years. Areas where trees were removed include 1 fairway, 10 fairway, 12 tee, 14 tee, 14 fairway, and 16 fairway. Most of these areas are known to us so we knew where to start looking and weren't to surprised when we found infected trees. We were a little surprised to find more of the Ponderosa (Bull Pine) had been hit by the Western pine beetle. So far the Western seems to have a preference for the smaller trees in "out of the way" locations.

Logs from the trees were stacked in staging areas and then transported to a local mill.


Other tree work this time of year includes the application of drain tile to tree limbs to stop the deer from damaging the bark with their antlers.

Fall Paving

This falls project has been the renovation of select cart paths on the golf course and repaving a portion of the parking lot. You can go to the KGC home page to see a description of the cart path portion of the project. Most of the work was done after closing so I'll post some pictures with descriptions here.
The earlier weather impacted the paving contractors work schedule at other locations and, as a result, the work that was suppose to be completed by the contractor on the golf course was pushed back until spring 2010.

We began by removing the old pavement and digging out the roots causing the humps in the cart paths.

We used a chain trencher to cut any roots next to the paths with the hope of delaying any damage to the paths in the future. We then hauled 200 tonnes of road crush with our utility vehicles to fill in all the excavated cart paths on the golf course. Work then stopped and will begin again in the spring with final grading and paving of the paths.

The project that was completed involved paving a path to the members cart storage area and repaving the parking lot by the Johns cart storage to add more parking spots.

Early Snow

The snow at the beginning of the week was unfortunate since we had not finished treating some tee's and all the back fairways. By Tuesday snow had settled to about 2.5" . With only a couple inches and the possibility of rain and I made the choice to remove all the snow from the greens to lessen the chance of ice forming.

It took 2 days and four 9 h.p. track snow blowers to expose all the greens.

Traditionally, the snow before Halloween will melt but I choose not to take that risk and we began to plough those fairways that had not been sprayed yet. We started on the flat, smooth and firm fairways first and by Friday we were done removing a bulk of the snow from those areas we needed to treat.

The warm temperatures and rain melted the remaining snow on Saturday and we began to treat those area we missed on Saturday and Sunday.

In the beginning...

I have been giving some thought as to how I could inform more of the membership about the activities occuring at the golf course throughout the whole calendar year. The plan is to try to write a weekly update. Updates may be more frequent if time and events dictate. They may be also less frequent if not much is going on. I will try keep it short and to the point and incorporate pictures to spice up the posts.


This is meant more as a vehicle for me to inform the membership. If you have information or questions please contact me in person as I won't respond to comments or emails since I would like to deal with members in person only.