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.