Samples

It has been relatively quite this past couple weeks with no real news to report.  The snow is always nice and far better than rain.  The last couple dumps have added another 8" over the hard dense layer to get the snow pack up to a respectable 16 or so inches (similar to other years at this time give or take a couple inches).

14" total snow in this picture

Since taking the previous picture we've had another 3 to 4 inches of snow.

I did take some samples from greens earlier this month to get feel for what may be going on.  The frozen ground dictates a slightly different tool selection than normal.

Old cup cutter and sledge hammer are the only way to get samples

The problem with frozen ground is the difficulty in pulling a complete plug.  Basically, all you really get is small slice that seems to break at the interface between the sand and thatch.

Fresh Plug, 12 Green

My first plug was from 9 green since it is the one of the ones I am concerned about.  After digging and chipping I was able to do a little "scratch and sniff".  As flaky as this sounds, the process involves closing my eyes, clearing my thoughts, inhaling deeply and letting the smell tell my brain what to think.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, but when I smell grass in the middle of winter I automatically think of the color green.  This time out, however, I smelled sour which for me triggers a brown color in my minds eye.  I pulled a plug and brought it indoors and was glad to see it green up and grow.  The weird part it is only the Poa growing.  My guess is since the plug was difficult to remove and very, very shallow most of the roots (and possibly crowns) from the bentgrass would have been left behind in the frozen ground and, as a result,  any bentgrass leaf tissue would all fail to grow.

I've been out to the other greens with ice on the surface and early indications (smell and, as in the case of the plug pictured above from 12 green) appear less threatening than those so far observed on 9 green.  The plan is still to monitor the surface as best we can by randomly digging test pits and pulling plugs if conditions (i.e. smell) dictate it throughout the remainder of the winter.  I'll check the greens tarped with the semi-permeable covers next week and comment on any thing I see.

What does Ice mean?

A Brief History of 9 Green 

Ice Development

November 13
First snow 

December 29
End result after rain event and the on set of a cold snap.
Earlier snow has begun to form ice on the surface

January 4
More snow, more rain, and more cold.
Poor insulation from shallow snow cover
is causing ice to set up "tighter" 

January 8
Ice thick enough that you need a shovel
to chip ice to loosen it.

Not an ideal start to 2012 but it may be time to start thinking of golf again.  Since my last post in mid-December course conditions and the weather have been somewhat variable.  We've had rain, snow, lows of -18 Celsius, and highs of +8 Celsius.  Over that time the snow has gone through a few changes as demonstrated by the above pictures.  So now what?  First look at "Winter Kill" a post I did back in 2009 for a quick and dirty refresher.  

Ice isn't always the harbinger of death but it makes for some stressful times.  The ice we are seeing now is fairly set up over frozen turf and is no thicker than 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch.  Because I feel the turf entered winter somewhat prepared (versus 2009) it is my hope that the only thing this ice really means is we won't damage the surface if we decide to blow snow. 

At the risk of stereo typing Poa annua (the predominant grass species throughout the entire golf course), the one thing to keep in mind is Poa a nice lookin' grass but it's not very smart.  Any sign of spring like weather and Poa will burn up it's stored winter carbs and start prancing around like it's mid-June.  Without the "antifreeze" like protection the carbohydrates offer even a small drop in temperature below 0 degrees could result in damage from crown dehydration (FYI: intracellular crown dehydration is the sudden freezing of fluid within plant tissue that draws water from cells dehydrating them and killing the turf; extracellular cellular crown dehydration happens the same way but ice forms outside the turf plant).  Truthfully, however, I am not 100% sure of what to expect so I'll keep checking the green surface to monitor the ice development and keep doing the "smell test" to get a feel for what may be happening.