Weeks of May 9th and 16th

Punching and Collecting Cores on 15 Apron

This past week was good weather wise but pretty average production wise. Most new employees are trained up and we can now begin to take the more experienced staff away from routine maintenance and start to use their skills to finish off or get started on some of the projects I would like to get wrapped up before the end of May.
Starting on last Friday, we aerated and top dressed all the collars and aprons. I attended a seminar a few years back where an agronomist from the USGA suggested incorporating the collars and aprons into the same aeration and top dressing program as regular greens. The idea is to extend the greens playing characteristics to immediate area and allow players the option to take advantage of those characteristics as they approached a green. This year we are also doing it to help the light, air, and water reach past the matted, dead turf from this past winter and give the existing turf as well as the seed bank within the soil a helping hand in growing and filling in the funky spots.

We will use the cores generated from this aeration as a seed bed for filling in the sides of the recently renovated cart paths. We will mix in a healthy quantity of perennial rye grass seed (quick to germinate and able to withstand traffic stress) with the cores to help get turf established next to cart paths. Sodding the little strips next to the path, especially now with cart traffic and summer coming may be a waste of sod. The cores are composed of the ever ubiquitous Poa annua and as such are able to grow in areas that other grass may have a hard time getting established. One request to players is to try to limit traffic on these area until they have filled in. We don't have enough ropes and stakes to block off all the area; besides to much of that stuff always makes a golf course looks cluttered and messy.

Core Bordering the
Cart Path on 10 Fwy

Green Measles

If you've been lucky enough to get golfing in between snow days last week you may have noticed green dots on some of the greens:

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Those dots are indicative of the turfs response to aeration. Aeration will come up lots and there is always plenty to talk about but for now I wanted to show the obvious benefits of aerating greens. Everybody knows that plants leaves absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen (photosynthesis) but sometimes people forget that the plants also need to absorb oxygen to make the energy (respiration) for cellular reactions occur. I am going to be fast and loose with the facts but a fairly "true" statement is all parts of the plant need to absorb oxygen in order for the plant to survive. Roots absorb oxygen to help fuel the transportation of nutrients into and throughout the plant. Some nutrition can be foliar absorbed but strong, healthy turf needs a strong, healthy, functioning root system. Each green dot seen in the first picture is the exact spot where an aerator tine penetrated the turf and left behind a open column down which water and air can travel. I used a cup cutter to "slice" through one of these columns to reveal the growth of roots over five inches deep on a mostly Poa annua green. If you look back to "Bent vs. Poa" post in February you can see pictures of Poa annua roots that are barely two inches. If you double click the following picture you can get a better look. Yeah, I know it is not a great picture but for this green, number 7, that is pretty impressive. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Week of April 25

After the brief flash of summer a few weeks ago the weather has toned down a bit to below normals, again! Golf course wise the turf is slowly recovering and everyday there is more grass to mow. We have finally finished flashing sand and edging the bunkers and will begin maintaining them on a regular basis. Aside from making the bunkers presentable, this process also allows us to create an inventory of those bunkers which may need some extra work such as adding more sand or, in extreme cases, a complete redo. We edge to remove grass that has crept in over the previous season and to re-establish any ambiguous edges. Every time we edge there is some contamination from the native silt and clays and eventually these particles cause the bunker sand to lose some of its characteristics that make it playable. For an area being labeled a hazard, bunkers require a fair amount of maintenance to keep them from being too "hazard like". Despite this and their bad reputation with players, bunkers add another challenge to the game and contribute to the aesthetic appeal of a golf hole. One more thing: what is the rule on bunker rakes? There is lots of opinions but, believe it or not, there is no rule. (http://www.usga.org/course_care/faq/Turf-Management-FAQs(4)/). For KGC, rakes are mostly kept inside bunkers parallel with the line of play. The reason is mostly selfish. Since bunkers are hand raked, staff has to walk the perimeter of each bunker to perform their task. It easy for bunker staff place the rakes in bunkers and out of the way of mowers as they rake each bunker. Although it sounds trivial, the time it takes for the mowing staff to move the rakes out of their way adds up over the entire course. Also, the urge to just "nudged" the rake out of the way of the trim mower with the cutting heads while mowing around bunkers is awfully tempting and usually leads to destroyed rake handles and at $15/rake that also adds up!

The grey weather hasn't allowed for many good "photo op's" but regardless I've included some pictures of native plants people often see in the spring.

Prairie Crocus by 12 Tee

Arrow-Leaved Balsam Root #14

Wild Strawberry #14

The crocuses seem to have already lost their blossom and the balsam root is just beginning to become showy. We don't have as many flowering native plants as some other golf courses but if you keep your eyes open (mostly the in the back nine) you can see lots as you go around the course.

Course Conditions on April 23

We have been lucky to have a few days with above normal day time highs which have really helped getting the grass to green up start to grow. We also have most of the irrigation going and that too has helped. Last fall and winter was a tough one on the irrigation system (especially the back) because of the lack of snow cover and how deep the frost went into the ground. I thought I would post some recent pictures to show how the place is greening up. We are still rough around the edges (bunkers need to cleaned and sand moved around, clean up from the fall still, etc., etc.) but as we bring seasonal staff online starting the first week in May it shouldn't take long to get caught up.

#17 Hole


#18 Green


#9 Green


#1 Green April 5

#1 Green April 21

We will play all 18 regulation greens for this weekend (April 23 and 24) and make a decision on what will be open for the following week but come May we plan to have all 18 in play for the season.

Paving

BA Blacktop has been at KGC for the past 2 days and finished their part in paving the cart paths. We had to close the front and back nines on different days to limited interference between the paving crew and the players. Each day the paving crew shows up on your door step it costs over $7000 so it was to the clubs advantage to make sure the pavers could work without any interference. Everyones understanding with the respect to inconveniences caused by the paving project is greatly appreciated and will be, hopefully, rewarded with a nice smooth ride!

Hot mix had to brought to the paver from staging areas since the tandems could not access areas within the golf course


Loaders travelled across certain areas on the fairways with the only real damage on #6 where there was severe rutting.


This just shows the amount of equipment needed to do even a tiny project like KGC just did


End result

You can go to www.kimberleygolfclub.com/news.html to understand how we chose which areas to core out and completely re-do versus "over paving". There remains numerous spot that still need repairing but it is probably wise to look at paving cart paths as an on going maintenance process versus a one shot deal as long as we are dealing with trees and their roots. Now that paving is complete the grounds crew will spend the season tying in the edges and cleaning up all the seemingly random piles of debris left all over the golf course.

New Irrigation for #1 Green

During the time that #1 green is out of play we decided to take advantage and update the irrigation heads and control. The irrigation system at KGC is a mish-mash of control systems and design logic. A quick and dirty explanation with respect to water distribution (i.e. pipes) is best said by the phrase "size matters". More of an explanation would make an uninteresting subject even more boring. The control system can be explained a little easier. A irrigation head is kept down by either the absence or presence of a stimulus which can be either electric (called a normally closed system) or hydraulic (called a normally open). KGC has hydraulic on the back and electric on both the front and back. Number one green is has electrically controlled heads but, because "size matters" and because of wiring the old heads could only operate in one particular orientation. What we are planning to do is increase the volume of water feeding the green by looping the pipe and increase control by adding new wire. The following pictures show the process, equipment, and supplies needed for such a project.

First we had to dig out the old heads and add new heads and pipe.


Sometimes you can push the limits of the pipes properties and give it an extra tweak to make a corner!

Adding extra heads means adding new wire too.


We pulled over 3000' of wire from #1 green back to the field controller on #3 tee


The resulting trench requires some clean up but not as much as a trench made by a chain trencher


Where we used a chain trencher we had to screen out the rocks when we back filled

New heads watering #1 green

When Do We Open?

There may be a belief that the only thing we wait for before opening the course for play is for the snow to melt and the ground to dry up. Most years this is true. In 2010 most of the course was free of snow by the end of the third week in March. This was more an indication of the general lack of snow cover not the warm weather. An important point to consider before opening the course (and certain greens) is soil temperature. In the fall when we get below freezing overnight there is considerable heat in the ground that allows roots the ability to keep growing and absorbing nutrients. In the spring soil temperatures need to reach temperatures near 10 degrees C or 50 degrees F in order for roots and most soil microbes to start functioning (maximum root growth occurs around 15 C or 60F). When cold fall and winter contribute to a deep frost it takes longer for the soil to warm up . Continual overnight lows of -8 to -2 such as what we've been experiencing make the warming of the soil a long drawn out process.

I have been taking soil temperatures over the past few weeks and have seen some dramatic reading between greens and even within a single green. For example, #17 is pretty much the sunniest and therefore the warmest green at KGC and last week (March 27) the soil temperature during mid day was close to 17 C (mid 60's F) at 1.5 inches. One of the coolest greens in the spring is #7 and last week it was 3 C (38F) at 1.5 inches. Number 9 had soil temperature readings of 10C (50F) at the back and 15C (60F) in the front.

I again went out on Friday, April 2 to check soil temperatures on #7 green. I took the following picture from the back of the green and the importance of soil temperature as it relates to greening up is fairly obvious. In the picture foreground (the back of #7 green) temperatures were 3C while at the front of the green temperatures were 7C.

The other important thing to note is that those temperatures were taken from a green that has been double tarped since we exposed it on March 16th. Tarps help turf by moderating the lows and by allowing the turf underneath to warm up during day to a higher temperature than if they were exposed to the air. We only have a limited number of tarps so most greens are openly exposed; as a result, the speed by which the soil warms on these green is more impacted by the overnight lows.

That was sort of a boring topic so I finish with to pictures that show difference between years. I started taking pictures yearly to compare the snow cover on a certain date and how that relates to when we open. The first picture was taken March 25, 2008. That year we opened 9 holes on April 27th and 18 on May 2nd. (I've misplaced the 2009 photo but opening was 9 holes on April 17th and all 18 on April 22nd). The other picture is this year on April 1st. Hopefully, 9 holes on .........

Spring 2008

Spring 2010