Getting my Ducks in a Row

Fall is always has an aura of panic associated with it for me.  We really are fighting the calendar and losing one or two days to breakdowns, bad weather, or even late season play could have repercussions the following spring.  This year the course closed Thanksgiving weekend (Oct.14); last year we closed a week after Thanksgiving weekend (Oct.14, strangely enough).  Last year staff was laid off early and the fall work was completed by myself and the mechanic.  Looking back I can't believe how lucky we were.  This year I budgeted to keep some staff on week past closing and combined with the good weather we are ahead of normal...a good place to be.

All the greens were aerated with the deep tine aerator ( go here for past information) as usual but this time wasn't as nice as past times since most of the greens have at least 50% less root mass compared to other years so the turf was pulled up more than usual.  I sort have a theory on why there is less root mass and I'll cover that later.

With the exception of #6 fairway, all the fairways were sprayed this week.  Frosty morning meant I couldn't start spraying until noon but having staff to clean leaves and needles ahead of sprayer meant I could easily put down two tanks a day.  That may not seem like much but you have to calculate mixing, applying, travel time, and clean up as part of those days so it can take up to 1.5 hours/tank depending mostly on travel time.  The greens need one more and may get another treatment depending on weather and then they will have their sprays.

All that is left is putting out the tarps and getting up the elk "fences".  Actually I am too late with respect to the elk......

Elk Tracks on #4 Green

Some More Fall Activities Picts

So far the fall has been fairly typical work and weather wise.  We were able to deep tine all the greens again this fall with 3/4 inch solid tines.  Because we've been using this type of aeration for a few years now we were able to go as deep as 10 inches on certain greens with no detrimental effects.

Verti Drain Operating on #1 Green

Some of the greens (those with a little or no substance to their root zone) have a tendency to overly "puff up" when aerated at too deep a depth.  For those greens we lessened the depth and slowed the tractor which seemed to help keep the turf in place.  This time out we also rolled the greens with the tractor and aerator after we finished aerating and that really seemed to help lessen the "puffiness" factor.

Rolling to Smooth the
Green Surface

Depending on our spring and the health of the greens after this winter, we will have to aerate again early in the season to make up for missing this falls hollow core aeration.  I am still not sure how that will work itself out but the hope is that by pulling a core early on in the spring the greens will be able to recover from both styles of aeration in the time it would normally take for the surfaces to recover from just the fall's deep tine.

If there is any good news this fall it could be the fact that we found very few trees (just over 20) attacked by the pine beetle.  The flip side is the fact that some of those trees we found were very large Ponderosa's that dominate the scenery a KGC.

Cleaning up Ponderosa on
#6 Fairway

Hauling Logs From
#15 Green

As before, we will take the infected trees and process them in some fashion so as to kill the beetle.  

More holes

I could include the usual pre-amble regarding lack of posts over the last couple weeks (not much happening, staffing, etc., etc.) but it never changes so I won't bother going into any detail.

We started to aerate the tees this week as well as needle tine the greens with our deep tine aerator the same as we did last year (see deep tine ). Both are fairly low key events and will be followed by a light top dressing on the greens next week and and a heavy top dressing on the tees.

Obligatory Aeration/Clean up
Picture for the Tees

A little follow up to the from our spot fairway aeration I referenced during the July 7th post.

New Grass In
Aeration Holes

This picture was taken July 17th and shows all the little sprouts from the overseeding coming up. With the possible exception of the aeration on the left of 14 fairway all other areas are looking great and the whole process has allowed me to back off the water in these areas as well as eliminate any extra hand watering. This is something we will start up again in September when the timing is better.

The fox is still around and has made the local paper. In the following picture the fox is within arms length and was busy eating a mouse.

River Watch

Here we go again. I'm optimistic that with the level it is now and the the fact that it is already August we should have no problems but I want to keep a record and this is a good vehicle for doing that.

River Level
August 7

Something different from this springs run off was the deposit of a log just outside the intake. The angle is perfect but if I could choose I would place it 300 yard up stream so the log could continue to direct the flow of the water to the intake as the river level dropped.

Vertidrain

I have been lazy over the past couple weeks and have not posted much; however, like I said at the very beginning if there is not much going on I probably won't post. We've been lucky in that over the month of August there has not been a lot of breaking news on the golf course or tragedies to address. We are mostly in the routine of regular maintenance. We did aerate the greens the week of August 1st using a deep tine aeration method.

Deep Tine Aerator on 12 Green

The advantage to this style of aeration is two fold: 1.) aeration holes can be go as deep as 9" (versus 3.5"-4" for regular aeration) and 2.) the machine has the ability to loosen the subsurface for greater relief of compaction. The "kick" that relieves the subsurface compaction can also fluff up the greens (mostly because of our limited roots and heavy soils) and tends to make the surface bumpy. We do use 5-10% kick during our late fall aeration when play has stopped. To be fair, this time out we were only interested in creating holes for air exchange/water infiltration.

Needle Tine Holes

We were only able to get about 7" penetration and went with a slightly larger spacing. We could have gone the full depth and double the tines to get the biggest bang for our buck but with this type of aeration you need to fiddle around quite a bit to find the happiest medium between surface disruption (i.e. playability) and intensity of aeration. As we do more of this style of aeration and, hopefully, the greens overall health increases we should be able to go deeper and tighter. The real interesting part about this process is how and why are able to accomplish it. The general benefits of aeration (air exchange, compaction relief, thatch removal, blah, blah, blah) I'll harp on about in other posts. What I would like to cover here is the savings and the unique relationship that have developed. In the past we would contract out the deep tine to the tune of over $4000/aeration and since we weren't on the "A" list of clients we had to take whatever date the contractor offered. The very last time the contractor was able to fit us in the greens were frozen. As a result, and $4000 later, there was some greens we were unable to aerate completely and others that were damaged. Since buying our own deep tine aerator for $22,000 we have been able to deep tine 3 times at times that suit us. At the end of this year we will do one more deep tine for a total of 4 and a savings of $16,000. By the end of next year --assuming we keep the same schedule--we will have paid for the deep tine. There is costs associated with owning a machine but for the first few years those are mostly the cost of tines. The unique relationship part of this story relates to the tractor needed to operate the deep tine aerator. The tractor required needs to be of a minimum horse power and have a ultra low gear selection (sometimes called a "creeper gear") not to mention wide tires. KGC's tractor has none of these. As luck would have it, Trickle Creek does have a tractor that meets this requirements and they contract out their deep tine aeration's. So KGC has a deep tine aerator with no tractor to operate it and Trickle has tractor but pays to have their greens deep tined. This scenario obviously lead to a relationship that is best represented by the over used and usually self serving phrase "a Win/Win situation". With the two local golf course working together and sharing equipment we are able to take advantage of a highly specialized tool. Ultimately, KGC will have to replace our old Ford tractor but with the initial success of this particular equipment sharing experiment there is a possibility for local courses to purchase other specialized equipment and share amongst ourselves.

River Watch

August 8th

The huge rain events that kept coming last week have made watering a no brainer. But as you can see the river still continues to drop. There is more water at the river intake this year versus other years and as the middle of August approaches the watering requirements are usually less than early in the year so things appear "rosy". I feel a little bit like Chicken Little, but history is on my side.