Bummer.....

October 23, 10 cm

Well not really but still it could have waited until the end of the week.  It's early so I bet it will be gone before you know it since seasonal norms are with lows of -2 and highs of +10.  I guess the good news it all the greens have the spray they needed before the snow.  I got one more in my back pocket depending on weather.  The bad news is not all the fairways were sprayed (still have to do 1, 6 and 10) but I am going to bet this isn't staying.  Work wise I am still trying to get stuff cleaned up.  I now know I cannot operate with less than 3 people for shutdown there is too much that has to be done at the same time.  There will be things not getting done this year unless we have a protracted fall with no snow.  Not much else to dicuss but as always I'll keep things updated.

Fall Greens Aeration

This week had us bring in accessories from the course and start to get ready for the winter.  We did some fall treatments but the weather is not great (lots of rain in forecast and 1" of rain on Friday night!) so I am trying to hold off but as we get closer to November and the colder the temperature gets I may have no choice but to spray and hope the rain stops.

We completed aerating all greens on Friday with the Verti-Drain as is the tradition.  One thing I do in the fall as a pre-aeration survey is go to each green and pull a plug to see what kind of roots we finished off with.  As is always the case this is a huge disappoint but it can also be helpful.

2 Green

5 Green

I think I've said it before, but showing pictures of your roots is sort of like posting pictures of yourself in your underwear; i.e. no more secrets, its out there for all to see.  In my case I think it could be used for good instead of humiliation.  As you can see we have greens with roots barely over one inch and others with more than four inches.  A bulk of them fall into the 2 to 3 inch range.  I am going to reference the rooting situation in later posts, especially as it relates to making maintenance decision in the summer but for this time out the I want to explaining the importance of root depth and how it impacts the greens aeration in the fall.

Père Noël on the Verti-Drain

Short lesson:  aeration from a Verti-Drain (in the manner we did this fall) is more for compaction relief, especially at depths greater than a more traditional aeration.

Pre Aeration Depth

Post Aeration Depth

The tine in the preceding pictures is 10" long and in the first picture I can only push it in about 4" but after aeration the soil has been loosened enough that the tine easily penetrates to a depth of 8".  Notice that the tine is in between the holes.  This shows the real benefit of this type of aeration in loosening the entire soil profile and not just the area where the tine leaves a hole.  Anyways, the importance of knowing the condition of the root zone before aeration helps when we decide what depth to aerate and whether or not to add "kick" (this aerator can be set to give a little "oomph" at the bottom of its stroke to further loosen the soil).  We've found out the hard way the greens with shallow roots really don't like a deep Verti-Drain aeration and really don't like kick.  Greens like 2, 7, and 12 were the worst this fall so instead of a deep tine we went traditional and pulled a core with the hopes of increasing roots mass since, for these greens, relieving compaction past the rooting depth of one inch seems silly.  There is lots more to discuss here but maybe later.

October 20th Divot Party

I often kid with my mom about this being God's country (especially when compared to Edmonton!) but when you get days like this I sometimes think somebody upstairs is watching out for good ol' KGC.  The forecast for today was not very nice but for the all the people who came to fill divots the sun came out and it was a nice afternoon.  Once people were done it clouded over and little snow squalls blew through.  Timing couldn't have been better.  Just around 20 to 25 people generously took a few hours out of their day and filled divots on tees and fairways.  My staff never does fairway divots and since the middle of September I haven't had the usual divot master out doing his thing so it was great to get caught up on the tees plus the bonus of filling fairway divots in one afternoon.  I know we're not doing any earth shattering work but a nice turn out of volunteers like today always make me think people appreciate the golf course and are interested in keeping it in good condition at all times for all players.

Week of October 14th Update

We've been the usual "fall busy" since the last post with continued fairway aeration, irrigation winterization, and fungicide applications.  I've pretty much cover all these subjects in previous posts (irrigation winterization, fairway aeration, fungicide applications) in the past and, except for particular references to conditions at the time of the post, they contain relevant information so take a look if you're so inclined.

All the staff is finished for the year so it will be up to myself and the mechanic to get the course to bed on top of all our particular tasks we need to complete each fall.  Should be interesting.

The rain is pretty nice since some of the greens were starting to show moisture stress and I was thinking I would have to break out the water tank.  The prairie kid in me always wants to make sure the turf has plenty of water since exposed turf (especially with frozen ground) is prone to damage from desiccation (basically the drying or dehydration of tissue) but overtime I realize the the fall season in the Kootenays tend to be wet so I've tried to break the habit.  With this years late season irrigation troubles and the dry fall I was starting to panic but it seems to be working out.

Not much to discuss otherwise but I'll try to keep you update on things, especially if something unique pops up.

Outta Water: Update #7

Good news for a change.  We were finally able to reconstruct the infiltration gallery which allowed us to get down and dirty and try to bring water to the intake.  Previous to this we had to direct any flow away to make sure we did not deposit any silt down stream and affect the aquatic environment.

Excavator Placing Rocks

Completed Intake

Once the excavator was finished we went to town to increase the flow to the intake.  Day one was not overly successful since we were still unable to operate the pumps for any length of time despite moving rocks to direct the flow at the intake.

River Flow: Day1

Next day we went at it again with rakes to deepen the channel to increase the flow velocity. We also began constructing a weir out in the main river channel to try to direct more flow down our channel.  Those two tasks gave enough water for us to operate one pump (so far it has been running since 2:15 p.m. on Thursday).

Man Made Weir

Good Flow to Intake

Depending on the flow in the main channel we may have to go and extend the weir but it is nice to see at least on pump operate for over 12 hours.  Traditionally, any time we are able to get flow it only lasts for a couple days since, depending on weather, the flow in the river continues to drop.  When that happens we will extend the weir further into the main channel and, hopefully, fill the reservoir before I have to winterize the irrigation and transfer systems.

I never found my camera so I used bottle money to buy a new one - don't tell anyone on the finance committee!  I chose one that is somewhat shock resistant and water resistant.  At the end of yesterday I was saw the Kokanee doing their thing so I took a picture:

Under Water Fish Picture