Knapweed

Good news/ bad news, I don't have a lot to discuss. Mostly that means nothing tragic has happened and we are in "summer mode". Check out the work done by the staff members on the rock wall beside 17 cart path. If you find yourself having to look for balls over in that area (or by any rock wall, for that matter) do not climb on them since they are merely cosmetic, with limited structural properties and are not meant to be scaled like Fisher Peak. Other things going on include the appearance of knapweed throughout the property. Go to www.invasiveplantcouncilbc.ca/spotted-knapweed for more info.

Spotted-Knapweed by 12 Tee

There are numerous patches all over. We try to manage knapweed by treating known areas with a broad leaf herbicide early in the season as soon as the first knapweed plant is seen. If there is an area we missed or a new area where knapweed is able to mature we then pull the plants and put them plastic bags and take them to the landfill. If you are so inclined to pull some of the knapweed yourself please leave any plants in a high profile spot so we can dispose of the plants in the best way. You could let me know as well and when (and if) we have time we will pull the plants. At the very least, I will include the area on our weed map so we can treat the spot next spring.

River Watch: July30

(Last weeks post had the incorrect date on it. I changed it). So far so good. We are still pumping with both pumps at about 405GPM. Water is dropping so hopefully we get some rain up high and it bring the river up.

Quintozene, PMRA

An e-mail recently sent out to all golf course by the Pesticide Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA: the agency which regulates which pesticides can be used in Canada) informed everyone of the cancellation of a quintozene; a fungicide labelled for use on many agricultural crops and labelled for use against particular turf diseases. This fungicide is the backbone of KGC's snow mould prevention program. It provides good control of grey and pink snow mould at a reasonable cost. However as of December 31, 2010 it will no longer be labelled for use on turf. The good news is we can still spray our cole crops (broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and cabbage) at a rate more than 2X the rate suggested for turf diseases......go figure not suitable for grass but O.K. for the food we eat. If quintozene possess properties that make it inappropriate for use then no longer labelling it for any use make sense but with it still labelled for agricultural use the PMRA sends mixed messages which is used by special interest groups when they promote their anti-pesticide agenda and criticize the PRMA and its registration process. Anyways, the importance to KGC relates to the choice we will have to make in the very near future: spend the money to continue to treat for snow mould on the fairways with an alternative product or save the money and not treat at all. The following pictures is of a section of fairway not treated for snow mould taken July 16th:

Snow mould damage
Click picture once for better view
and again for magnified view

I know it doesn't look too bad but remember this picture is taken after 10 - 12 weeks of growth. We are probably only 8 weeks away from our first frost delay! Those areas won't fill in before the end of the season. This next picture was taken in the spring right after snow melt and shows the obvious control of winter diseases quintozene offers.

Snow Mould Damage

If all the turf was maintained at 1.5-2 inches this type of damage wouldn't be a big deal. Every spring all the lawns and sports fields around town come back, don't they? However, there is a direct relationship between the intensity of the maintenance and level of disease: turf maintained at a higher intensity equals more disease opportunity. If everybody would be happly playing their entire game of golf on 2 inch turf this situation would not be so threatening.

The industry had a chance to contact the PMRA during the re-evaluation process to explain the importance of quintozene to their operation. Here is a excerpt from the letter I sent referring to the budgetary impact discontinuing quintozene would have: "Today, an application of
quintozene on 10.11 ha (size of treated area at my golf course) at present label rates the cost would be $9350. The cost of comparable treatments would be $30,250 (label rates of Propiconazole) or $22,650 (label rates of Chlorothalonil and Iprodione). The prohibitive costs of the available alternatives to Quintozene require decreasing the area treated." KGC will, not this year but definately next year, will be facing some tough choices. The almost tripling of a single budget item combined with the constant increases in fertilizer, fuel, and staffing is making it nearly impossible to meet expenseses with our present revenue.

River watch: July 21

Despite all thunderstorms the level is down. Look back to the previous post and compare the water level by the big rock on the left of both pictures.

Week of July 11

Summer is back again as of the end of this week and we are back into routine maintenance with a greens aeration and the club championship both out of the way. As usual, we will continue to tie up lose ends (cart path edges, rock wall maintenance, etc., etc.) and try to keep on top of keeping things growing until the cooler nights of August. The biggest stress developing is the continual drop of the St. Mary river as the run off winds down. I will post river pictures with each post so people get an understanding of the struggles we face every July/August/September with respect to our water supply. This months pictures were taken July 16:

Looking up river at water flowing past pump
intake located on the right side of picture


Looking up river at the main river with
golf course owned land on the right

Presently, we are able to draw about 400 GPM (gallons per minute) with two pumps operated by electric motors. Typically, by August the river will drop to a level where we will only be able to run one pump at around 220 GPM which is just enough to keep reservoir supplied since we usually irrigate considerably less during August and into September. Just a reminder that if you click on each picture it will increase in size and one more click on the picture will allow you to zoom in.

The How's and Why's of Aeration

As part of the routine maintenance we finished aerating all the putting greens on the course last week. Everybody accepts the necessary evil of aeration but nobody likes it including the crew that has to do it. The shallow aerating performed this time out was to get oxygen down to the roots. Traffic from maintenance and play compacts the upper few inches of the root zone resulting in a decrease of available oxygen for the roots.

A quick and brief review of plant biology: grass is an autotroph a term which means it can create its own food. The process is called photosynthesis and the end products are glucose and the byproduct oxygen. Grass will use the "food" it created in photosynthesis to grow. The energy required for growth comes from a process called respiration which requires atmospheric oxygen (i.e. the plant has to absorb it). Seems strange that plants can create oxygen on one hand but on the other hand still need to absorb oxygen.

Another reason for aeration is removal of thatch from the upper surface. Thatch will affect nutrient availability, water peculation, playing conditions, incubate diseases, and contribute to poor/shallow rooting. A general rule of thumb is to aerate two times a year with 5/8 " hollow tines just to keep up with the thatch created by the turf in one growing season. The recommended volume of displaced material is from 20-25% per year. That translates in to 2 aeration's using 1/2" tines on a 1.25" spacing followed by two 1/4" aeration's on a 1.25" spacing throughout the growing season. Not goin' happen.

We keeping trying different things to find an agreeable process that provides a benefit to the turf with a limited disruption to playing conditions. This time out we used 1/4" tines on a 1.5x1.5 spacing that resulted in about 3% removal of organic matter. We picked the cores with a sweeper bought this spring and followed up with a medium top dressing. A traditional aeration requires the course close on an afternoon with any number of temporaries in play the next day while we top dress. Also, we require two aerators (we borrow one) two top dressers, 4 people to collect cores, 1 person to broom in the sand; 9 people. This time we used one person to aerate, one person to collect cores, one person to blow debris, one person to top dress: 4 people. We were able to do 7 greens/day with no closure and no temporaries.

The hope is we are able to perform 2-3 of these aerations over the golfing season (May, June, August) followed by an aeration with larger holes once we close for the season which would remove about 9-15% of the surface area (depending of the type of fall aeration: hollow core vs. verti-drain). Time will tell.

Fertilizing Fairways

The past 10 days or so have been very busy with lots of maintenance getting done. This post will touch on the recent fertilizing of the fairways and roughs.

It takes about 2 to 3 days for us to fertilize all the fairways and rough using anywhere from 2.5 to 4 metric tonnes of fertilizer. Ideally, you want to fertilize in the spring when soil temperatures have risen to around 55 degrees F (or 10 degrees) and the turf has just started its first growth cycle of the season. That way there is sufficient nutrients available for uptake for development of new tissue. We were late by a couple weeks mostly because of the weather and other matters kept us from fertilizing any sooner.

Spreading Fertilizer on 9 Rough

This particular application has the analysis of 21-3-21 (FYI the numbers on a fertilizer bag represent the percentage of Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium a.k.a NPK. They don't add up to 100% since NPK are only the individual elements of the compounds that make up the whole fertilizer product). We apply at a rate ranging from .5lbs to 1lbs of actual N per 1000 sqft (another FYI: actual N is calculated by taking the weight of the bag multiplying it by the the number representing nitrogen on the bag and dividing by 100. For e.g. 21-3-21 comes in 55lbs bag so: 55 x 21/100 =11.55 lbs of actual N in one bag. At a rate of 1lbs/1000sqft one bag of 21-3-21 can be applied to an area of 11,500 sqft. This same calculation can be done for Phosphorous and Potassium as well.) After we have decided on a rate we need to calibrate the tractor spreader (and walk behind spreader) to achieve the desired rate. We use a big bag and run the tractor spreader for a set time at a set speed and then weigh the fertilizer collected. We do this over and over until we have the desired setting. That is stuff is probably only interesting to me but it applies to any rate calculation for any granular fertilizer so feel free to use it for your yard.

The biggest hurdle we have faced recently has been the cost increase of fertilizer by 40%. A couple ways to control cost is to use different fertilizer types. More expensive fertilizers have more nutrients and/or different nutrient formulations (e.g. methylene urea's) than a cheaper brand with the same NPK analysis. There is a trade off with using cheaper formulations and usually this is the length of time the fertilizer works (i.e. a fertilizer with a higher percentage of quick release Nitrogen is cheaper than a product with more slow release) and the compounds used in creating the fertilizer are usually higher in something called the "salt index" which can have deleterious effects on the turf. The other more obvious way to deal with cost increase is to fertilize less area. We are doing both when we fertilize. Those rough area with an increasing population of clover are areas which have not seen a high quality fertilizer or, in some cases, any fertilizer for a few years.

Our next major fertilization will take place in late summer/early fall when the turf enters its second major growth cycle before going dormant. The analysis will be similar with more micro nutrients and a different Nitrogen source which will still be available in the early next spring when soil temperature start to climb.

There is way more information to cover with respect to fertilizing and plant nutrition but I can tell peoples eye's are glazing over so I'll leave it there. Click the following link and read what the USGA had to say about the greens at the US open and see if the first paragraph sounds like any other place you might know of.

http://www.usga.org/news/2010/June/Beauty-In-Eye-Of-Beholder/