Freaky Friday Follow Up

With first day of winter just around the corner I thought I'd give a brief update of how we made out after last week.  Right now, I am glad I didn't panic and attempt to remove any more snow than what I did.  With respect to #9 and new putting green things did not change which may mean problems in the spring but I suspect we may not have too much to worry about on #9...just a hunch (or hope?).  The rest of the greens I that I've looked at appear like this:

#2 Green Surface

If you remember the last post I said things were developing a more solid surface layer.  Now?  There is no layer like I was seeing last week.  Not sure why but I'll take it.  There is just over 3" of snow which has similar properties to styrofoam (dry, hard, strong).  Unlike styfroam, I don't think there is much insulation in this cover so temperature swings may have an impact.  Because the turf is dormant I don't think cold will negatively impact us but mild above zero temperatures (especially overnight) and rain may cause problems unless we get a good fluffy snow cover within the next little while.

Despite the fact that we're entering a slow time work/golf wise I will keep an eye on things and provide updates so check back often.

Freaky Friday....

...which hopefully won't turn into Sh*tty Saturday.  The pineapple express is at it again and as usual it's created some headaches.  The mild temperatures during the day and night combined with the rain have pretty much saturated the snow covering the course.  Since none of the green surfaces are thawed (I had to dig a valve up last week and needed a pick ax to break the top 6" of soil before I got past the frost) the slow trickle of water through the snow is starting to freeze on the surface.

"Pebbly" Looking Green Surface

A quick survey yesterday of all the greens (except 13; I haven't been there yet) revealed all the greens have a similar type of appearance.  Basically, the somewhat loose surface granules have started to coalesce into a entity with more substance (sort of tap dancing around saying it, aren't I?).  The new putting green has got this going on:

Dreaded Clear Ice

Now what?  I suspect that there is very little buffering capacity left in the snow cover and we won't be able to ride out another bout of wet weather like we just had without making things worse; however, I also suspect that since most greens surfaces appear similar to the first picture and not the second we may not be that bad off.  To back up this suspicion with more than just my "spidey sense" I decided to experiment a bit.

The '' Ol' Wishy Washy Split Plough on #9 Green

Why only half?  This way I can be right and wrong no matter what happens in the spring!  But truthfully  (assuming things don't get any worse ice wise) I'm not sure the surface has enough ice cover to be overly damaging.  I do know that it is not uncommon for dense ice to develop when you plough wet snow and the surface doesn't completely clear off but luckily for us by the end of the day the pebbly ice looked like this:

Crumbly Ice with Air Gap

This layer sort of comes off with a bit of work but I'm going to leave it one more day and see what happens.  And finally...

Yea, That's Ice

I removed all the snow from the new putting green and by the end of the day not a whole lot had melted. Let's call it day 1 of ice cover on that girl.  Again, we'll see what tomorrow brings but that one might be funky in the spring, just saying....

Year in Review.....Number Wise, Part II

..... continued......

For T & C, a different approach to fertility and different types of fertilizer resulted in a longer time between mowing.  Instead of mowing every 4 days we were able to stretch it to every 6 days which translated into about 40 hours less mowing in 2014 versus previous years.

Hours Spent Mowing Tee's

The only real way, I think, to keep this up is to start spraying with a growth regulator but at KGC's HOC and grass species I would have to take a real hard look to see if there was any savings.

The other area I thought we could do better was the amount of time and money spent mowing fairways.  Different mowing patterns, different fertilizer sources and release patterns, and different growth rates on certain fairways were some the approaches we took when trying to increase efficiencies.

Hours Spent Mowing Fwys

A quiet tee sheet in the very early a.m. and limiting mowing to 4 hrs/day regardless of how long the fairways appeared were the two biggest reasons the total hours spent mowing decreased.  Skipping a fairway because it was a slow grower helped but this is only applicable to some of the back fairways.  I believe the extra time we gained in very early mowing with only 1 group teeing off between 7 and 8 o'clock created less interference between player and equipment which allowed us to keep up with the turf.  The new/used mower we bought this fall is slightly wider but I suspect the increase in fuel costs (bigger engine in this unit) will off-set any gains received by cutting a wider swath.  Really, the biggest decrease in time and money spent on fairways occurred after 2010 when we began to use a single mower on a regular basis.  Looking to the future, I'm having trouble seeing ways to decrease costs associated with mowing fairways.  Shutting off water during the summer is the only thing we could do to see a dramatic change but without tee to green cart paths to control cart traffic it wouldn't take long for more than a few of the fairways to turn to dirt.

To be continued......

Year in Review.....Number Wise, Part 1

Last year at this time I attempted to explain the time and money each job takes (go HERE) and tried to highlight supposed trends in the maintenance at KGC.  I used that information this past season and with some reading on Twitter and various other sources I tried to implement ways to be more efficient.  The one caveat about this years information is that 2014 was not the best year when it comes to demonstrating staff hours worked this season.  Early season staff changes caused me to veer from my original compulsive, controlling, and over-thought plan but I'll still explain it and then "pontificate" about what I've been able to interpret from the numbers.

As it stands, we are pretty tight staff wise already so what I felt I needed to do was plan each day from opening to closing so I could staff as efficiently as possible .  Generally, it's the SSDD when it comes to the routine maintenance at KGC so I felt I could plan a week out it would be fairly representative of the season in a very general sense.

Schedule for a "Monday"

This was only the first part.  Last winter there was a fair amount of talk amongst turf geeks about something called a "digital job board".  Basically, a digital job board posts staffs daily routines on a template that was stored in the "cloud".  This allowed for viewing jobs anytime and anywhere as well as on the fly changes from a smart phone out on the course.  It was suppose make me more efficient but I didn't take full advantage since my phone lacked a data plan; however, it did make me plan better. For my job board I basically stole the format from the superintendent at Pender Harbour golf course on the coast.  I think it was a Twitter discussion about job boards in which he and allowed anyone to view his job board so I basically copied the look and added some personal touches.

The View as You Enter Lunchroom

Close up of Donated 40" L.E.D T.V.

Now instead of trying to interpret my chicken scratches on the white board staff could easily read what the days plan was.  There was glitches and there is lots of fine tuning to do but I'm fairly confident in saying it has become a useful and appreciated method of communication.

Enough background.   How did all this planning and scheduling affect the operation of my department?  As already mentioned, the whole process made me a better organizer.  It also reaffirmed my assumption that there are very few areas we can cut back on.  Laying out a typical weeks worth of week ahead of time demonstrated to me just how much we are unable to do.  There was more than a few mornings when either a unplanned absence of a staff member or some other event resulted in me having to shuffle a typical daily task or completely eliminate that task.  I had an idea that there were potential cost saving in a few of the daily routine tasks (mowing greens, tee, fairways, roughs, bunkers, daily set-up, rolling greens) associated with maintaining the course.  I thought we could do better (budget wise) when it came to mowing tee's and collars, mowing rough, and mowing fairways.  Maybe we could save money on fuel and labour if we tried a few different things.

To be continued.......

Winter Update.....

Those 25 degree temperature swings in less than 12 hours are tough to handle.  It's back into the deep freeze with overnight lows below -21 Celcius.  Although we did not receive much rain, the above freezing temperatures had a significant impact on snow level and moisture.  The best way to describe the snow was "creamy"...or really wet "mash potato" snow over a very thin "corny" ice.

3 Green

By Friday night it was still rainy but ultimately we got the dump and temperature drop the forecast called for.  I checked conditions late Saturday and there was actually standing water and slush under the snow despite the cold temperatures.  I knew I had to wait to get an honest feel for conditions so I didn't check until today (Monday).  So far this is what I've come across:

3 Green, again

 We have close to 4" fluff over 2" of frozen "mash potato" on top of close to 1/2 corn ice.  Some other greens have similar but the surface ice has a bit more substance but still somewhat removable and not the dreaded clear ice.  I still have to go to all greens to get an idea of what's out there.  I am sure 15 will be covered with ice, hence the tarp.

Not an ideal situation but not exactly uncommon either.  I'll keep monitoring to see if anywhere develops more severe ice but as it stands now the turf is at it peak strength dormancy wise so I am comfortable with leaving things as is.  As usual, it's later on in the season when the problems can really develop so stay tuned. 

Keep Your Fingers Crossed.

Short update.  Luckily the snow has been slowly accumulating and any little amount we get moves us further away from the "death zone" (go HERE for explanation).  The forecast is still for rain with above freezing temperatures for the low on Friday which is not great but the good news is it appears to be very short lived since for Saturday the forecast high is -12.  I know I've expressed my displeasure with November before and this year is doing nothing to change my attitude.  I was unable to put the tarp back on #9 mostly because the initial snow never melted and I wasn't to thrilled about blowing it off.

On Monday, the forecast was periods of rain Thursday and Friday with above freezing temperatures over night.  I watched the weather and had that forecast stayed the same I would have started snow blowing the green surfaces on Tuesday.   However, snow overnight on Monday and period of rain changing to 60% showers on Thursday and just rain for Friday (not periods of rain, when they say that experience tells me its going to pour!) have made snow blowing greens less likely.  Also, compounded by the fact that it is snowing right now, I am hopeful we will have enough of a snow cover to be able to absorb any moisture in the form of rain without creating surface ice.....we'll see if that is the case in about 48 hours.

First draft of budget is done and once Novembers numbers are in I'll be able to take a closer look at where time and money was spent.  Already, I know there was 1200 less staff hours in my department this year versus 2013.  I'll take a closer look and let you know what was different this year.

I thought it would be fun to post pictures of the wildlife that is around the golf course when there is no play.  I bought a trail/game camera on sale this fall and put it up in various spots.  I had a fair amount of deer and elk pictures but none were great to I set the camera up near 2 green on a heavily traveled game trail just over the bank.  Some pr*ck stole it!  I'm obviously naive or people are jerks...or both!  Anyways, the only wild life out of the ordinary for us is these guys:

Dudes, go south!

The fact these geese are sticking around is bugging me.  Hopefully, it's not because they think the snow is going to melt and more because of the poor flying weather (?).  We watched a coyote take a run at this flock and he struck out.  I like them it's too bad they are messy.

Ketchup....Catch up?

.....meaningful titles are sometimes hard to come by.  Anyways, here's what's been happening over the past couple days.  Last weekends forecast was pretty much on the nose regarding snow and cold.  I went out on Sunday and put down the tarps and Enkamat before the weather hit but had to tweak the process a bit.  Like I mentioned before, since we were unable to afford more Enkamat, I had planned to split it up amongst the greens that I think may need it the most.  The new tarp for #15 green scared me because it is so 'impermeable-like" (remember anoixia? go HERE) so I used the Enkamat to cover close to 80% of the green to maintain an air gap before rolling out the new tarp.  The remaining Enkamat was only able to cover a little less than 2/3's of #7 green (which is where the other impermeable tarp is located).  So, obviously, the upper putting green, the back of #9 green and the lower tier of #6 green do not have any Enkamat.  This is too bad since the condition of these surfaces in the spring were pretty good and  I think that was partly due to the Enkamat.

The one unfortunate part with the arrival of winter at the beginning of the week was the wind that preceded the system.  I staple the tarps to the ground and generally add extra on the side of any edge facing the prevailing wind.  The wind last Sunday night was the dreaded "backwards wind" which meant it blew completely opposite to the way it normals comes.  The end result was the semi-permeable tarp on #9 blew off.  I've decided not to remove the snow from the green and expose it to all the predicted cold temperatures.  I'll try to fix the tarp later.

I've mostly been inside during the mornings either reviewing expenses or looking into ideas I've had during the summer but didn't have time to investigate (for example, I think I've found a way to use my phones GPS and Google Maps to record and store in the "cloud" the fertilizer and/or chemical applications we make during the season.  With that information we can be somewhat more accurate with our record keeping...something that may be a requirement in the ever changing "landscape" of pesticide regulations.)  The rest of the day I continue to prepare equipment or areas of the golf course for winter.

One more thing.   During the summer when I received positive comments about the condition of the course I would, at some point during the conversation, say something like "it's been a good year to grow grass" or something along that line.   I wasn't trying to be modest but I was instead making an observation.  An article written by an agronomist from the USGA Green Section comments on course conditions as they relate to weather.  To be fair the article seems more to be referencing an apparent habit of players to equate good conditions with good weather while ignoring the importance of a superintendent and blaming the superintendent entirely for poor conditions while completely disregarding the impact of bad weather.  Thankfully, to this point in time, that has never been a huge problem at this club for me.  What I like about the article is the last two paragraphs which have a simple math equation that can be used to sum up course conditions in a succinct manner.  Again, the gist of the article isn't overly applicable to our/my situation but it is some food for thought.  Take a look HERE to read it.

Post Season Preparedness and Activities

As fall weather goes this year has been in the top 5.  Since the last day of play there has been half dozen or so frost days and only a few rainy days with most of those occurring within the last week.  Since its only been me for the last 2 weeks the nice weather has made it easy to get things buttoned up with the only thing left to do is lay out the tarps.  With respect to the tarps I had to replace #7 old tarp since it was badly torn and had numerous holes.  Unfortunately, that means there was no money to buy more Enkamat (go HERE for reminder) which is disappointing since I've been pleased with the outcome where I've used Enkamat under the tarps.  I may divide up whatever Enkamat we have to half-ass cover areas on the greens under the tarps; especially under impermeable tarps.

The mild fall has meant a bit more disease popping up on fairways, even on those fairways I treated.

Microdochium Patch, 14 Fwy

I would guess that the disease began developing before I sprayed but I am comfortable that most fairways were treated before the disease really took hold as it obviously has in the preceding picture.  Untreated fairways are definitely showing disease but they always do.  Timing the sprays is tricky and I've talked about it before (go HERE) but time constraints, staffing, costs of the chemical, and the mode of action of the treatment all mean I have to make an somewhat educated guess when the spray has to go down.  As it stands now this season is shaping up as a high disease pressure year; especially if we get a permanent snow cover before the ground has time to freeze (and personally when it comes to that I like unfrozen ground since water from any winter rain will soak in versus freeze into a ice sheet).

For the fall sprays I did my usual random experiments comparing different chemicals and different rates on certain fairways. 

18 Fwy: Instrata vs Trilogy

8 Fwy: Different Application Rates

By not spraying the entire fairway on certain holes I can compare chemical efficacy in relation to disease occurrence on non-treated areas.  This year I also picked spots on some fairways (1,10,12,13) where I did not spray to monitor efficacy and to get people appreciating or understanding the necessity of winter treatments.  To make it fun I choose a few of the fairways and deliberately left a particular geometrical shape so as to catch your eyes and deflect criticisms from other "turfies" who may think I just zoned out and made a mistake.  Just one more reason to anticipate next golf season!

Again with respect to the weather most areas had time to do some catch up on root mass since I wasn't mowing and your weren't playing (Go HERE for deep tine and root review)

Token End of Season Root Pict to Make me Sleep Better

Other greens are always the same this time of year and always amaze the hell out of me each spring and fall or whenever they make it through the stress with surviving grass.

#2 Green after Deep Tine, Antithesis of Previous Photo

I am pretty sure I can grow roots as this picture shows:

10 inches of  Poa Roots

This is a plug I took from the collar around a green where we bury hollow sleeves used to hold up the fence posts around select greens.  This picture shows what aeration can do if you commit.  I could talk tonnes about the potential this picture shows but the panicky looks I get when I say we will be pulling a half inch core three to four inches deep tells me support would be hard to come by (believe or not but there are machines which can remove a "core" that big and deep and then refill with sand all at the same time!).

I suspect my next post will involve numbers or something like that since we are entering the fantasy/planning stages of next years budget.

Writer's Block or Fatigue or....

.... not much new.  Stuff is going on but it's all the same sh*t just a different pile.  It's hard not feel like we're spinning our wheels but I guess the grass is still growing and the doors are still open so it could be way worse.  I'll try to be brief and cover some events from the past 2 months.

River/Irrigation

Our channel at the river pretty much dried up in September and we had to be very judicious with the irrigation.  Luckily, we had a nice rain at the beginning of the month that carried us for a bit but that was short lived with the sunny weather for the rest of the month.  I was running on empty so fortunately some investigating into our water license by another individual from the board of directors revealed we had the option to divert the river.  Great news that somewhat pissed me off because in all my dealing with the ministry that was never mentioned as an option.  I learned not only to ask for help but also never assume the government is telling you everything.  End result was from this:

to this:

The only problem was by the time we had the flow to pumps we ran out of time to pull from the river so we never completely re-charged the reservoir.  Hopefully the river stays the same for spring and we will still have the flow at our intake to fill the reservoir and meet our spring irrigation demands.  At present, it appears low water flow is less of an issue for us but we still have the problem of pumping dirty water during spring run off which wears out our pumps and costs us thousands of dollars.  I still believe we need to connect to the city water line to address this issue but the potential cost is forestalling the inevitable.  We'll look into other options over the winter and hopefully we'll have a plan in place before I start up the pumps next spring.

Equipment

We managed to make it through another year and only had to add one utility vehicle and one triplex mower to our junk/obsolete pile at the shop.  Again, by the end of the season I had pretty much had it and did a "dog and pony" show in an attempt, one more time, to demonstrate how dire our situation is.  I've always assumed people knew how beat up and old the equipment was since dilapidated pieces seemed to have been randomly plunked all over the course throughout the years in various states of disrepair but I think because they were always pieced back together and made operational people don't really appreciate our situation.  As always, quantifying a situation helps.  Saying a mower has 4000 hours means very little to most individuals but if you equate hours to miles people may begin to understand what "old" means golf course mower wise.  A reference I found (GO HERE) equates 500 hours on a mower to 125 000 miles (that's 240 000 km!) on a car so 4000 hours is similar to 1 000 000 car miles.  All of our equipment has more than 1500 hours and a majority has greater than 2500 hours with some pushing 6000 hours.  Even if you cut this estimate in half our machines are old.  Luckily, the club had a somewhat OK year so we've updated our old stuff with some used stuff.....

it's a start.

Finally, some pictures worth viewing.  The first one is of a pot located near the bag drop area.  Someone put a smoldering cigarette in the pot and when I showed up in the morning the pot had completely melted away and the wooden step next to the pot had burnt.  Take home message is to look for an ash tray instead of the closest receptacle to litter with your cigarette butt.

Click Picture

This next one is was from a couple weeks ago looking from #1 tee and could pass for a guy in a bear suit sitting on a branch.

I found this robin staring at his shadow just outside the golf shop one morning.  There was a large collection of birds gorging on the mountain ash berries on 4 tee and folk lore has birds getting drunk if they eat too much (go HERE) so perhaps this bird was a little funked up.  I put him on Sam's Bench to ride the buzz out and he either eventually flew away or ...?

Hammered?

Right now its winter prep time and this year we are doing a little tweaking of the irrigation  and a small bit of work in #7 bunker.  There has been some difficulties winterizing the irrigation but other than that its the usual routine which I'll try to touch on in later posts. 

The "A" word and River Update #2

The first three weeks in August were somewhat boring since two tournaments will occur two weeks apart so all we have really been trying to do is keep the grass mowed....not an easy task this year (which I guess is way better than the alternative, i.e. not having any grass to mow!).

And now for something completely different.  If I had my way I would love to aerate the greens just after the August long weekend since recovery would be quick and by the time the turf began to grow new roots we would be very close to raising the HOC which would mean even more opportunity to grow roots (generally, the more roots the better turf can handle stress).  The reason I bring this up relates to the condition of the fairways this year during the long heat spell we experienced.  I have spent most of the summer amazed and confused at how well the fairways have looked.  When you do the same thing from year to year you expect similar results so when you get those years where things are different from normal (good or bad) you sorta want to know why... at least I do!

I don't compare conditions between courses since there are so many different variables but I do ask in general what other golf courses are experiencing turf growth/health wise.  If it's similar to what is happening at KGC I credit/blame the weather.  If conditions are different than what KGC is experiencing I look at what I am doing different and try to come up with answers as to why things differ.  To be honest,  growing turf is as much an art as it is a science so many of my conclusion are complete guesses.  So this year my guess as to why we had good fairways is three fold. (Oops!  After re-reading that last paragraph I seem to be implying that KGC fwys are better than other golf course.....not what I mean.  What I meant was the fwys at KGC are better this year than they have been other years; no arguing that point!)

1. We are mowing fairways way less than in the past.  Perhaps less traffic and less mechanical stress associated with cutting the fairway is allowing the turf to direct its energies into increasing stand density versus expending energy to repair damaged tissues and recuperate from mowing stress. 
2.  The last couple years, due to staffing, we aerated our fairways very early compared to waiting until late fall.   I suspect by aerating early the turf has had time to recover and establish new roots which allow it to better handle stress.  
3. Our continued effort in late spring/early summer to aerate, over-seed and top dress areas I know are prone to showing heat/moisture stress during the growing season.

We will aerate early again this year so I'll be interested to see if the fairways grow the same in 2015.  I guess, being a grass farmer, I can't completely ignore the weather conditions over the past 2 years as well.  Both 2013 and 2014 springs and winters were good for grass (not overly hot and plenty of moisture in the spring and good snow cover with no real ice during the winter months) and I know that helps. 

River Watch

We've been able to keep one pump running by putting in about 10 to 12 man hours moving rocks.  In preparation for the vacuum truck next week I had a back hoe come down and clean out directly in front of our intake. Obviously, the rain at the end of the week brought up the river and allowed me to shut off the irrigation and catch up on filling the reservoir so we are sitting pretty good for the next little bit.  There is possibly some things in the works to help us with our water woes at the river but I'll keep it vague until I can give you more information.

Golden Trees at Kimberly and River Update #1

Unlike the Sitka spruce that grew on Haida Gwaii (go HERE), golden conifers on the golf course mean trouble.

Picea not-lookin-so-goodica

One of the group of pines planted between 6 tee and 9 green finally went funky.  Those trees were sort of seconds from a local nursery and the middle one has always been a funny tree that finally had enough.  I don't believe the trees demise was beetle related but most likely something specific to that particular tree (there is a thing called pine wilt caused by a nematode but you need to send sample to lab for conformation.  If it is pine wilt you basically remove the wood, chip it, and burn or bury it.  We're going to do that anyways so paying for a diagnosis is somewhat mute.)  I'll replace it but not until the weather is better (i.e. not as hot and dry)

We wrapped a pink ribbon around a Ponderosa pine on the left of #14 down by the fairway bunker on the right side.

Beetle Kill Ponderosa, Right #14 Fwy

That is pine beetle and we missed it last fall.  Truthfully, we never really had the time to scout let alone remove any pine beetle trees since all staff but myself and the mechanic were pretty much laid off once play was finished.  A short term gain budget wise but the long term cost will be more trees lost to pine beetle and, unfortunately for us, the trees are what makes KGC a golf course.

River Watch

I started doing this couple years ago and in a year with all the heat we've had and so little rain we are really depending on the river to supply us with water until the cooler weather comes.

Flow at River Intake, July 28

At the time of the July 28th picture the pumps were still supplying about 325 GPM to the reservoir (versus around 425 GPM previously throughout the season).  As it stands now this is what we got:

Flow at River Intake, August 5th

 What makes this an auspicious day is the drop in flow at the river now means we can only pump around 210 GPM which means over a 24 hour period the most we can pump is 302400 gallons.  Up to this point in time the golf course sees about 450 000 to 480 000 gallons of water a night.  Obviously, each time we irrigate we will unable to replace over 150 000 gallons in the reservoir so based on the reservoir capacity we will run out of water in 28 days, i.e. September 2.  Again, obviously, I will stop irrigating areas and we should start to use less water but even with those measures I don't see us getting much past the middle of the month.  A Couple years ago the City allowed us to use the fire hydrant to supply us with water but a letter from the Operations Department this spring said that was a "one time deal".  Our quickest option it to tie into the Mathew Creek line that runs through the golf course via a new connection installed by the city.  We would then have to connect to our system.  Both options cost $$$ and we would have to pay the city up front and pay for a contractor to connect to our system.

This whole situation is getting old and is giving me grey hair and wrinkles. (Go HERE to review 2012's river problems.).  We really need to be responsible and look at viable alternatives and commit to addressing the low river/dirty river situations before our luck runs out.

That Was a Quick 31 Days

Over a month since a post.  July flew by and already I have to drive to work with the truck headlights on.

So whats been happening on the course?  Mostly good stuff with only a few typical "situations".  It's seems like old news but I'll comment on some small projects completed over the past couple months.  The new sponsor sign has been erected next to #1 tee and is filling up with the three levels of sponsors.  The construction side of the project was completed with volunteer member labour with the only costs being the materials for the structure and the printing of the signs.

Completed Sign With Sponsors

Another completed projected was the flowerbed redo at 4T that I mentioned in the last post.  By far the coolest thing about that project was the donations received from the members.  Alison W. got the ball rolling by donating her 50/50 prize from a Friday night social.  Soon the players from the Rose Bowl tournament voted to donate all unclaimed deuce pot money from their tournament.  A couple more 50/50's and from Ethel J. and Sue O. and all of a sudden it began to look like the "crowdfunding" idea had struck a cord with a certain group of people.  To date there has been over $400 contributed.  I basically used a portion of that money to plant the 4T flowerbed and buy the extra concrete caps needed to "finish" the project (finish is in quotes since I was unable to get the same colour and style cap to match the old style we salvaged so it looks a bit awkward)

Adding and Amending Root Zone

Mixing It Up

Finished Flower Bed

I was very excited and happy to see the response from my desperate plea at the AGM.  People either appreciate our situation or took pity on me.  Whatever the case may have been I was happy to have the cash to do a little something extra and I believe people are pleased with the result.  Is it too bold to ask for more?  Imagine, redoing a weak tee or adding extra tees to make the course more player friendly?  Maybe keep updating/renovating the existing flower beds?  If you've got a bee in your bonnet share it with me and maybe we can find proponents and who knows what can happen!

Pretty Routine...

Routine is how I would describe the last two weeks.  We are spot aerating and overseeding select fairway as foretold and, unfortunately, we haven't been able to get to the collars but we will.  If you go back and look at posts I wrote in the month of June in years gone by you will see that most every June we were aerating, fertilizing, and fighting disease.  It sort of makes me see how common place events and situations really are when it comes to maintenance in June. 

I am now sure that I am running too small of staff since sh*t isn't getting done and if something is completed it is not in a very timely fashion.  One project dragging on is the not-so-quick and dirty re-do of the flower bed on #4 tee.

Adding Fresh Root Zone for Flower Bed on 4T

We dug out the old railway ties and replaced them with the blocks from the old wall that use to be near #8 green.  Those blocks have been in our dump for ages and I decided to make use of them.  Ultimately, I see replacing the homemade rock walls all around the course with this style of block.  I know landscaping with this style of landscape block is definitely pedestrian (and somewhat expensive) but since the homemade walls fall down or bulge out and need repairing every year and we just aren't getting to them I feel forced into choosing a lower maintenance alternative.  Perhaps the "crowd funding" idea that seems to be taking on some steam could help in the replacement of the rock walls with landscape block.  What do you think?

As I get older I begin to really to appreciate those things that save my back and my knees.  I think I've made mention of my experience with high rise toilets and how fantastic they are so from now on when we replace a potty it is with a high rise.  Keeping with that theme I bought some rake handles this spring with the hope of catering to crotchety backs.  Instead of 54" handles I bought 72" handles and put them out on those holes with really steep bunker faces. 

A 18 Inches Difference May Not Look Big but Every Little Bit Helps

In a perfect world players would always exit a bunker on the shallow side but a fair number don't even take the time to smooth their regular tracks.  People tend to take the most direct route out so I thought I would provide longer rake handles to reach down the steep face and players could smooth their foot prints if they chose to go that way.  Also, maybe, with any luck, longer rake handles may make raking bunkers easier and perhaps more people will do it.  Uh huh.......

No Excuses Other Than There is Only 24 Hours in a Day

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm horrible but I am not finding the time to post.  I'm thinking I've made a mistake by staffing the way I have but we've really only been in fully open mode for a month so maybe I am just panicking.  Good news is we aren't trying to grow out any damage other those areas I didn't spray on the fairways.  Temperatures have been pretty good for cool season turf.  My bench mark for how good a growing season we are having is by looking in the 1-2-3 triangle.  This area has no irrigation and never receives fertilizer and this spring it's thick with dandelions and the grass is past my ankles.

For the next month we will be trying to help those fairway and rough areas prone to drought stress by performing an aerating/top dressing /over-seeding regime that has yielded positive results for us over the past 10 years.  We will try to aerate tees and aprons as well before July.  The next greens aeration is scheduled for July 6th week; a traditionally slow week thanks to Stampede.

Right now we are dealing with a huge flush of seed head on fairways and greens.  This is usually the time when certain diseases rear their ugly head.  All spring we've seen a small flare ups of anthracnose and fusarium.

The other thing to be aware of  is the pollen.  Last year, at this time,  a golfer went to the local clinic complaining of shortness of breath, congestion, and head aches.  The on-call doc suggested it was all the pesticides the individual was exposed to on the golf course.  WTF?  I guess allergies was to boring to suggest.  Anyways, the air is so thick with pine pollen is actually obscures the trees if you look over a distance.

Next time out I'll try to cover some of new and different things.

Short Update and Tarps

One week under our belt and nothing out of the ordinary.  We were able to finish aerating and top dressing all greens this week (except 14, still no irrigation) so all I need now is some seasonal warm temperatures.  The mornings are mostly frosty and only a very few daily highs have been above +12.  Also, we've had no real moisture and as a result some of the greens have gone sort of funky (as I mentioned in my last post) and are slow to green up.  Heat, not scorching heat, is the key for us now.  Give me some +18 and above 0 for overnight lows and we should see some good growth.

The greens that appear to be in mid-season form were those that were covered with tarps for the winter or were the greens that saw some time under the tarps during the early spring.  Not only do tarps act like a "blanket" for the turf and keep any heat from the sun trapped a bit longer they also keep the relatively humidity higher which, in this circumstance, aids in early season green up.  You can dry turf out under tarps so you still have to keep a wary eye but in this part of the world early season tarping is almost always a real plus for helping the turf get a "leg up" early in the season.  As always, there's a catch.  Tarps really aren't overly expensive but they are labour intensive.  Moving them around, peeling them off on hot days, putting them back on at night, and battling the wind are guarantees every year.  The days of having even a small crew of staff working the weeks before we open are long gone.  We are trying to come up with a method to make it a one man process but it's proving harder than we thought.  As the saying goes, "necessity is mother of invention" so I guess we'll see either how needy or inventive we can be.

Getting "Schooled", Again!...Follow KGCtweets

Holy, I am still learning about Twitter.  You may be sick of how daft I am when it comes to this topic but this should be the last change.  A third party pointed out something with respect to Twitter and audiences.  I dare say none of you care about the minutia of growing grass and some other grass geeks most likely aren't interested in frost delays, aerating and top dressing days, or whatever I post as it relates to KGC.  Using the hashtag #KGC to identify posts particular to the golf course works but the tweets seems out of place when I post using my original username so I made a new one: KGCtweets.  Again, if you use Twitter you know what to do.  If you text all you need to do is send a text to 21212 and type Follow KGCtweets in the message body of your text to receive real time updates about the golf course.

Now, what's happening out on the course?  There are18 holes opening on Good Friday.  As usual, we won't be ready but any play in April is all about working out the kinks and renewing friendships.  All greens wintered well with no real problems and all will be in play.  The past couple years we've attempted a pre-opening aeration and top dressing and 2014 will be no different.  The biggest hurdle is completing the task while trying to clean up from winter.  Truthfully, we won't be done and you'll have to deal with the process until we are done.  Sorry.  As predicted, start up of the irrigation is a struggle.  We only just started the back on Tuesday this week and still the hydraulic lines on the driving range, hole 17, hole 15, hole 13, and hole 14 are frozen.  Without the control from the hydraulic lines to keep the sprinklers down we cannot pressure the pipes on these holes so, obviously, we are unable to water.  It may seem early, but with no real moisture this spring the greens have dried out and appear stressed.  It should be easy to get them back but we are at the mercy of our irrigation system.  Tank watering could be an option but without available equipment or staff it won't be happening this year.

This past Monday had the Annual Work Bee and as usual people really chipped in.  I would guess because of the day we picked, numbers were down a bit but those who showed up definitely did their part and I am grateful.  Pictures will be posted on the KGC website under the "Photo Gallery" tab so go check it out.

The only picture I want to show is this one:

Elk Tracks

For some strange reason the elk are still around.  They are a problem in the fall and are usually long gone by now but  #2 took a shellacking the other day.  The real interesting part is how the damage to the surface was the worst at the back left of the green and far less severe on the front right of the green.  Why?  Better root mass at the front is my theory.  That green doesn't have great roots to begin with but the front right of the green sees more sun and has somewhat more substance versus the left side which is weak looking and always shows disease stress first. That big fir and ponderosa are going, it just a case of when.

Annual Spring Photo and Twitter Re-visited (Revised)

(I used the wrong syntax for the directions describing how to use text messaging to access Twitter in the original post.  I've updated it now.)

1 Tee, April 2nd

One of my traditions is posting how things appear around April 1st so people can see how much snow is remaining (Go HERE for last years photo).  It's been a somewhat slow melt and as a result we are a bit behind last year.  Opening is still tentatively planned for April 18th and that may be possible but don't be surprised if winter pays us one more visit.

As usual, I suspect we will start with some version of a "9 hole" layout and open other holes as they are ready.  Right now the good news is we have very limited damage and all but one green (#14) are completely free of snow and some are even greening up.

Truthfully, number 2 green is a bit funky and my initial guess is its health relates more to how it entered the winter.  I became concerned last year with the unusual amount of growth (as measured by collecting clippings) experienced on all the greens last season.  My fear was the energy being directed to all the vertical growth (especially in the fall) was been fueled at the expense of CHO storage.  Compounded by the fact that #2 green (in the fall) becomes mostly shaded starting at noon I was concerned about the development of winter hardiness for this green.  I have it tarped and did some tree pruning (more will occur later in the season, I promise) to give it a bit of help.  As it stands now, if the green doesn't improve it will be a temporary until soil temperatures are adequate and we see some good growth.  It's not real bad but it's got a long season ahead of it so I may baby it for April.

Another developing tradition is the Member Spring Clean.  An e-mail will be sent out letting everyone know when to come and volunteer.  It really does help with preparing the course for opening and limiting early season expenses.  This year there is a few extra branches down due to all the snow so I am hopeful for a big turn out.

Back in December last year (go HERE) I decided to try and see how Twitter could work for me, you, and KGC.  What did I discover?  If you're not disciplined, it is a huge time waster!  However, I have found it useful in certain aspects so I've decided to try and emulate what other golf course geeks are doing.  The hardest thing is wading through all the posts.  Truthfully, that's only a problem if you decide to create or already have a Twitter account.  If you choose to just follow my feed with your cell phone via text message you will only receive "tweets" from me and no other persons feed.  How do you use your cell phone to follow my feed?  Assuming you text, all you need to do is type the number 21212 in the "To:" window and type "follow KGCtweets" in the message body of the text and then press "Send" and you're good.  When I send a tweet that relates to the club I will preface any message with #KGC.  Any time you receive a tweet from me that doesn't start with #KGC you can pretty much ignore it since the lack of the hash tag and the KGC mean I am posting on matters that don't specifically relate to the course.  Like I said before, I plan to use Twitter to inform in "real-time" the happenings at KGC such as when we will definitely open, frost delays, or days when we aren't allowing carts, or stuff like that.....I think.  I promise not post my opinion on topics outside of KGC, no pictures of empty beer bottles, and no photos of other local superintendents in compromising positions.....well I am not so sure about that last one, some of those guys need to be knock of their perch!  Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Look! I see Grass!

Slowly, very slowly the snow is disappearing from around the course.  Those greens that I sped up the melt on are all open and appeared to have wintered well.  Realistically, an official "we are good" comment won't come until I start to see some growth but I am in an optimistic mood.  I still haven't removed the tarp on 15 green but I am at the mop up stage and the tarp should be off soon.  I did get 7 Green cleaned off and was able to look under the tarp and saw how it wintered.

7 Green 

Similar to last year (go HERE) I messed around with the Enkamat product and saw positive results.  In the picture above the upper left corner of the green was covered with just an ice shield alone while the obviously greener turf was covered with both Enkamat and ice shield.  As I've said in earlier posts we didn't really have any ice this year so the ice shield wasn't necessarily required but based on this picture it would be tough to ignore the benefits of the Enkamat.

If you remember last fall I also used Enkamat under the semi-permeable tarp on 6 green ( go HERE for reminder) and, as luck would have it, the results were similar.

6 Green

As usual, the picture somewhat distorts how the turf really appears but trust me when I say it wintered well.  Aside from trying to give the weak part of this green a head start I also wanted to see the impact of the Enkamat in conditions other than under an impermeable (i.e. ice, slush, and water).  Again, it's tough to ignore the apparent benefits.

One final experiment I did with the Enkamat was using it directly on a green surface without any cover to see if results were similar to last year.  The green was 9 but it still has snow so we'll have to wait to see what has occurred.

For the next week or so I will shuffle tarps around to those greens which appear slow to get going and start to clean up a few loose ends in anticipation of the Spring Volunteer Clean-Up and, dare I say, opening!

A Quick and Dirty Spring Update....Revised

(Oops! I accidentally posted before I was finished writing and editing.  Read this one and forget anything you may have seen earlier with the same title)

The last couple of weeks have seen more and more snow melt allowing me to access more areas.  I am doing the usual messing around and trying to speed the snow melt by spreading either straight sand or other materials on select greens and miscellaneous areas.  We are lucky this year since ice appears to have never developed on any greens surfaces.  The greens which I have chosen to melt snow are more on the shadey side or, for whatever reason, have more snow than typical.  Why do some greens have more snow?  I referenced a situation two years ago when comparing 12 green and 13 green snow pack.  You can go HERE for my unproven theory.  After 6 days I can tell you that by using a medium rate of dark organic fertilizer there was conservatively 50% more snow melt versus areas left "au naturel".  Take a look:

After 1 Day

After 2 Days

After 2 days the snow dropped about 3" (for both those days overnight lows were -10 C and daytime highs were +6...but nice and sunny).  As of today, on #6 green for example, there is 5 to 6 inches on the front shadey portion of the green while the middle/back still has almost 10".  A slow sustained melt is nice. There seems to be only a limited amount of moisture on the green surface and despite the overnight lows of -10 C there still must be enough insulating properties remaining in the snow as the moisture isn't freezing on the surface overnight.  It's funny how these same conditions would be the kiss of death in December or January but now it's OK since the wet surface seems to slowly thawing the subsurface (I guess as the snow pack get more and more funky warm air temperatures are probably getting to the ground as well).  But elsewhere:

The "hole" left #11 Fwy

It's been a few years since we have to deal with this but, as mentioned in older posts, the ground is frozen so any moisture from melting snow will run to low areas and sit there until the ground thaws.    One other area of note when it comes to water is 15 green.  One of reason we tarp 15 is because of this:

Water "Thundering" off 15 G

The whole green slopes right to left and both the front and back slope towards the swail in the middle, left of the green.  Compounding the water problem on 15 green is the huge bank on the right side.  As a result, melting snow always causes water to puddle on this green. Obviously the more water that runs off the green the less the chance ice will develop and the less chipping I will have to do.  I am hoping another week will have the snow to a manageable level and then we can get the tarp off.  It's a huge job for 2 guys (go HERE) to do in a day so it would be an astronomical job for one guy....me!  As usual, stay tuned to find out what happens!

Conference Time

Part of a herd of Elk on #11 Fwy

Luckily the winter has been pretty slow, hence the lack of posts. More snow is always welcome if for no other reason than the possibility that an increasing snow pack in the mountains may prolong the flow in the St. Mary throughout the summer (as of February 1st, the East Kootenay is 93% of normal and the snow survey sites around Kimberley are 100% of normal).  We now have close to 22" versus the 12" we had before the last 10 days of snow.

I just got back from 5 days of education sessions, trade show, and seminars. Attending allowed me to accumulate continuing education credits that are tracked and aid in the renewal of my pesticide applicators license (truth be told I struggle with this aspect of the renewal process mostly due to the fact that CEC's replace a written test but that's a discussion for another time and place). A new format for this years conference had learning seminars bookend the “meat” of the conference. I chose to take a full day leadership seminar (that one opened my eyes to how much I've limited myself and what a chicken sh*t I am) and a half day seminar on maintenance standards and budgeting (got some great examples that I will be implementing...stay tuned!). Although the energy and offerings at the conference were great there was a definitely an aura of trepidation surrounding the industry. There are small pockets of growth in certain areas as well as established courses in larger markets that don't appear to be feeling the pinch like we are at KGC but most everyone else could relate to our situation in one form or another.

Education is usually one of the first things to take a hit during lean times but the information relayed at these types of conferences is put to good use back at KGC.  Examples of ideas I took away from previous conferences are regular greens rolling, using moisture meters to cut back on irrigation and improve playing conditions, tarping of the greens, brooming greens for grain and density, the development of a maintenance standard, even some of the personnel strategies I use with my staff are only a few of ideas that have been implemented at KGC (to some degree of success, IMO). That being said I feel that if associations include educating members as part of their mandate they need to keep finding economical ways to allow all members to experience meaningful and quality education.  For me, I belong to certain associations for many reasons (advocacy, promotion and recognition of the profession, an industry resources, and networking just to name a few) but continuing education is one of the most important.  The reality of the present golf economy means many educational opportunities are missed since the cost associated with travel and lodging are difficult reconcile with need to control expenses.  I am seeing more offers to access educational webcasts via some of the larger associations, certain on-line education companies, and through some industry representatives.  If provincial or territorial associations dabbled more in providing long distance opportunities (e.g. webcasts or internet access to recorded educational opportunities) their value would be that much greater and that much easier to justify when budget time rolls around.

Hmmm... there I go again.   Not sure what my point was but obviously something was on my mind.  You probably only really care about whats happening on the course.  Like I said at the outset, not much.  I nosed around before I went to the conference to see what was happening under the snow and did not see anything that concerned me.  No real ice, not even on the usual suspects (the upper putting green developed some but just recently).  The ground is still frozen which bodes well for limited incidences of disease on untreated areas (sorta depends on spring, to be fair).  Taking a look at things from all angles, frozen ground might mean something if we have a quick melt (standing water and possible washouts) and may mean a slow start for the turf (low soil temperatures means turf is slow to start growing) and quite possibly a boat load of irrigation hassles (especially with respect to the hydraulic system on the back nine) but we'll see.

Oh Boy, Here it Comes!

The past month has seen a fairly relaxed schedule with not much happening on the course.  With this year being the 90th anniversary of KGC it would have been nice to plan for something extraordinary but not much has really been budgeted for.  I am sure something will come up in discussions during meetings before the season gets going.  After all, 90 years of history is the one thing KGC can bring to the table that no other golf course in the area can offer.

Speaking of other courses in the area, you may have heard of the recent sale of one of the newer courses.  I am glad the sale went as it did with an outside group acquiring the property.  Fresh minds and a fresh perspective might be able to develop a different golf business model for the East Kootenay.  At the risk of alienating people, I going to speak my mind a bit.  There is concern that there is not enough local players to support all the courses between Kimberley and Cranbrook.  A director at another local course commented once that he only sees two courses in Kimberleys future.  Within the context of the conversation during which this statement was made the implication was KGC was headed the way of the Dodo bird.  I definitely do not subscribe to that view.  The changes implemented last season and the success they brought show just how viable KGC can be in a ridiculously competitive golf market.

The "glut" of courses in this area is great for the local player especially since all courses seem to be competing for the same "value orientated" golfer demographic.  A "new player" in the golfing game could price their course at such a level that they could be seen as "raising the bar" (green fee wise, that is) and in turn take some pressure off with respect to having to lower rates to try and continually attract the same group of golfer.  Obviously, the idea of raising rates is not very popular with locals.  But, at the risk of sounding rude or elitist maybe not everyone should be able to golf at every course at rock bottom rates.

I obviously sound self serving (as some of my cohorts have indeed suggested) but I sometimes think opportunities are missed by the projection of our own financial situation, our personal bias, and our perceptions of what we feel a round of golf is worth.  A $250 or $400 dollar green fee seems insane when you look at course like KGC but when looking at a modern, high end course designed and built like no others in a spectacular location a $400 green fee is not that unrealistic; especially, when you consider that less than a 40 minute flight away is a province that is "home to the highest percentage of those with incomes in the top one per cent (of Canada). One in every 50 Albertans is in this $191,100+ category, with almost one in 30 Calgarians reaching that level" (go HERE for CBC news article).

Re-reading this rant makes me sound like I am promoting other golf courses over and above KGC which not true.  What I am promoting is the development of green fees that reflect the true value of a course (or more accurately, the development of greens fees that reflect the true value of operating a course).  A very vague statement that could spawn another whine about pass books or season passes offered by courses that promote themselves as "daily fee" or "resort" courses.

Now that I got that out of my system I'll make sure to focus on the golf course and write about more important things next time out!!