"Since You're Gone"....

It's the last week of October and we are pretty much on schedule with all the preparations needed before the snow flies.  The awesome weather has allowed us on the course in good time each day with frost only being a problem over the past couple days.  This time of year frost usually sticks around until "noon-ish" which drags out most of the fall prep activities, especially the fall spray treatments.

Last weekend was the fall work bee (go HERE) with a nice turn out and even nicer weather.  With only a few trees to clean up (dead fir on 2 G, all the weedy poplars back of 14 G) a large number of people were able fill divots on 4,5,6,8,9,11,16,17, and 18 Fwys.  If you missed this work bee don't panic since I'm pretty sure there will be one in the spring.  They are such a huge help.

The crew completed a very minor irrigation expansion located between 6 and 8 greens.  This area is somewhat out of the way but because of inadequate coverage it shows moisture and heat stress early which easily creeps into the neighbouring surrounds on both 6 and 8 greens.  Ultimately, this expansion will continue onto 8 green where we will install irrigation for the surrounds as well as continue to the cart path on the right of 8 green.  I get to hear players complaints about how rough the ends of certain cart paths are and the one on 8 is probably the worst.  The concentrated traffic and no irrigation make more that difficult to keep turf established in that area.  I know from past experience that sodding the end of a cart path with no way to irrigate is guaranteed to fail.

In future posts I hope to cover some of the geeky tech things we do.  This will be the first installment. One of things I like to do is gather information about activities on the course.  This information gathering in relation to fertilizing and tracking pest/disease outbreaks allows us to create a data base which we often use as a reference.  There is numerous companies offering specialized software and devices for just what I describe but in our situation they are not a necessity and are too expensive.  However, as is my style, I'm always trying to cheap out and bastardize a "made in Kimberley" solution.  I started with aerial photographs with mylar overlays and felt pens but a pal gave me an old "I-thing" onto which I was able to download particular apps and now I can map fertilizer applications with GPS and upload to a site which stores the "track".  Go HERE to see the most recent fairway fertilizer (clicking the "satellite" toggle in the upper left corner of the picture gives a real life picture).  My hope is to use this more in the future to track all applications on the golf course that will easily viewed by all.

Mea Culpa......

What else can I say?  I haven't kept up with updating the blog and now any audience I may have gained have most likely given up.  With hindsight, I now know how stupid my staffing plan was for the 2015 season.  This isn't the time to go into it but spending my mornings operating 2 to 3 different pieces of mowing equipment on top of my regular duties has exhausted me and, frankly, made me bitchy!

A quick review of the little blurb that appears on the right hand side of the the blog page ("What's the Point?") reminded me of what I was trying to do and how I may have lost my way a bit.  Short updates with pictures not long winded over explanatory essays!  So let's try it again....

Lots to cover but this post will cover something you'll get to use.  I saw another superintendent post something on Twitter with some local weather information for his area and I asked where he was getting his data.  He directed me to a on-line source that sells weather stations for the backyard, meteorological weather mega-geeks.  So way back at the start of summer I bought a weather station but it took until August and help from KGC's I.T. guy, Bruce I., to get it working.  Go to Kimberley Golf Club Weather Station to see data from the weather station.  At the top is current weather and if you scroll down there is graphs and tables which give historical data for our weather station but, FYI, information is only available starting on August 16, 2015.

I know Kimberley is not that big but by looking at the info from the station before you come down you will get a feel for what the weather at the club is like.  Who cares?  Well in the very near future frost delays will be an issue again so instead of trying to get through to the golf shop in the morning to see if there is frost you will be able to look at the temperature a make an educated guess.  This time of year anything below -2 degrees will probably mean a delay.  Another FYI, the stations present location skews temps about 3 degrees warmer than it really is so if you see a temp of +1 it is more likely -2 ish.  I will still attempt to inform players of delays via my Twitter feed as well.  Twitter, another thing I have trouble keeping up with......