Early Winter Update

First week of new year out of the way, most of the visitors we had over the holidays are back home (one more group this weekend!) and now it's time to get back and establish some sort of routine. But first I'll fill you in on where we are now.

The first snow did eventually melt over a majority of the course which allowed us to get back out there and finish off the fall aerating. Neil L and myself were able to tag team  a very large portion of the front rough with the aerator during the last week of November which was a nice bonus.

The greens mostly managed to keep a thin layer of snow but for a select few that I choose to clean off and treat one more time.

2G - most snow melted but I did shovel off some

We went a for a stretch with cold temperatures and no cover and I am a bit worried about the impact on the Poa but the good news is since the ground had time to freeze (and is still frozen) I have a good hunch disease development should not be and issue this year.  The flip side, and there's always a flip side, the frozen ground will make for a slow spring start since the soil temperature will need to warm up before things will start to grow.

I made reference in the previous post about covering the small tee renovation we started this fall. Hopefully you were able to walk out and nose around to see the changes. I find it distracting to look for my camera to document progress and since my hands always seemed to be covered in muck I'm never too excited to reach into my pocket and grab my phone to take a picture with it either.....so there really isn't very many good pictures, sorry! Instead I'll try to briefly describe the impetus, the methods, and what is left to do this upcoming spring.

Here's a secret: I do watch you (members and daily fee players) when you're out on the golf course and make mental notes about some of your habits. I'm not looking so much for the ball mark repairing, bunker raking, and divot filling that is not getting done but more to the things that I think make your day sh*tty. Although I try to avoid generalizing too much, I sometimes think I can divide golfers into two groups: the self serving narrow minded group that want everything catered to their game and the over the top extreme group that thinks every shot should be skill testing and if you can't keep up then don't bother playing.  Ignoring either extreme, what I think is more of an issue is the impact mobility and length (yes, length!) seem to have on most players at KGC. We don't have the skill or resources, monetarily or otherwise, to tackle any major changes. Generally, KGC is short and, IMO, it is narrow and not particularly forgiving off the tee for an average player or high handicapper. Also, some tee complexes themselves are awkward and difficult to access and I know there are players who feel the same based on where they park their carts, especially on 13 tee. There in lies the impetus for tweaking the 13th and 14th tees: constructing a variety of tee decks for all level of players while improving the ease of access to the tee decks for all.

A discussion with Tom Yost opened up the opportunity for us to begin renovating the 13 and 14 tees late in the fall. Tom Y has the equipment and skill to do this type of work and offered to perform the work "in kind". For both tees the plan involved generating fill from the existing decks to create forward tees.

Before-ish Pict 13T

After-ish Pict 13T

By lowering and cutting away the banks Tom Y was also able to rough out cart paths for both decks that greatly increased the ease of access to the teeing surface eliminating the need to drive on the actual tee deck for mobility challenged players (or those of us with just sore knees!). In preparation for the excavation we stripped the sod from both tees but what we did this time was salvage what we could on homemade sod "toboggans".

Tom Y in excavator, sod toboggans in foreground

In the end we had enough salvaged sod to completely sod the new forward tee on 14 as well as 80% of expanded white/blue tee deck. As implied by the previous sentence 14 tee is mostly complete with the cart path and back deck to be finalized in the spring.

13 tee is roughed out with some irrigation installed on middle deck but final grading for the new forward and rebuilt white and blue decks still need to be completed in the spring.

Installation of irrigation on 13 T

It's tough to estimate time line to completion mostly because of the weather wild card but I suspect, just based on labour demands, you won't be hitting off new tees before May long weekend.

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.

Starting to See More Green

I know I've been lazy so I'll throw out this quick update.  Sunny days are helping and things have really moved over the past couple weeks.  Most greens are good with small problems on the usual suspects.  I am not sure why but the upper putting green (or some call it the new putting green) is dead.  That whole thing deserves its own post so I'll comment on that later.

The usual suspect greens are a combination of tarped greens and those other greens with a bit of a history of being difficult.  Time and heat are a good combination for most problems.

7G March 29

7G April 2

I was glad to see how quickly the plug greened up.  The problem, as is always the case in spring, is how to get the whole surface to green up that fast.


Take a look at these:

15 Green April 5

15 Green April 11

Soil temperature for the top picture was 12 degrees C while soil temperature for the the bottom picture was 15 degrees (temperature taken at about 1.5 inches below the surface).  One weeks time and an increasing soil temperature has made a big difference in the appearance of this green.  What I'm not showing you is the back of this green.  On April 5 soil temperatures were only 5 degrees C and the turf was very brown.  Today the soil temperature was 9.5 and the back looked like:

Back 15 Green April 11

No screaming hell but the point of all these pictures is to show how soil temperatures and not necessarily air temperatures are important in getting the turf to green up in the spring.