Bent Vs. Poa

Slowly winter is disappearing on the golf course. Traditionally, we would have 10-14 inches of snow. As of this week there is any where from 5-7 inches with lots of south facing slopes and areas around certain trees already exposed. We are keeping an eye on the surfaces and have not seen any more ice develop. The crusty layer referenced in January 23 post has actually lost some of its cohesiveness and is removed with very little effort.

I removed a plug from 9 green about 10 days ago from the back right (a cold shady corner).In the above picture the different colors are due to the mixture of bent grass and Poa. I pulled a core that had both grass species to compare how they would green up.The thing to note is the different tissue colors and the yellow on the left edge of the plug. It is subtle but the blue/green grass blades are Bent grass. The yellow and lime green grass blades are Poa. What this suggests is the Poa may be slow to get going this spring.

To survive the winter and start spring growth grass plants depend on carbohydrate reserves that are accumulated in the fall and stored in the roots. Poa has many good characteristics, however, deep rooting is not one. To explain this point I took plugs from 18 Green.

(A short history first: when we had ice damage in 2008 and had to sodded 18 green. We trenched in a drain from the low spot where ice develops to a catch basin off in the rough.Within the trench we installed a drain tile and a length of heat tape. Each fall we have to find the end of the drain tile we buried under the green so we can have a way to drain any water that may develop under the snow. In an effort to keep the playing surface consistent we sodded the ice damaged area with Poa except for a small chunk of Bent grass which is marking the end of the drain tile under the green surface.)

The following picture shows a Poa plug at the top and a bent plug at the bottom.The interesting part is underneath the surface. The following picture shows the root zone of the Poa plug that existed at the end of October in 2009; unfortunately, fairly typical for most greens. This next picture is the root zone of the bent grass plug
There can be a number of different causes affecting root growth such as light availability, traffic, growing medium, fertility, soil structure and height of cut. What the two previous pictures demonstrate is the importance of grass species when it comes to root development. Remember, these two plugs were directly adjacent to one another so they would experience the exact same conditions. The only difference is one plug is bent the other Poa.

Going back to this spring: with such a small root mass, Poa is not very resilient to multiple stresses. As I mentioned in the December 12 post last falls weather played havoc with the fall preparations needed to help turf overwinter in best possible condition. The plug from 9 green maybe a forewarning of what exists on the rest of the greens. The most important thing now is to get the Poa growing without any extra stress like multiple freeze thaws, ill-timed temperature drops, or early traffic.

Mid-Winter Upate

Since the last posting in December not much has happened......that is until the weather this past week (January 10-16 week). The snow level has shrunk from around 30 cm (12 inches, give or take) to 15 to 20 cm (6 to 8 inches depending upon exposure) in just 3 days. I don't have the rain gauge out but the rain has been less than 1/8 of an inch (according to information collected by the pollution control plant) and the daily highs have been above 0 degrees C since Jan. 11. Luckily, the low's have been below zero for the most part so the melt stops overnight and it takes a little longer to get going the next day. A day with rain and a mean temperature over 0 degrees for 3 days is what happened in December 2007 when we had ice damage to certain greens (see the following pict).

The difference this time out is we have less snow, it has not rained as hard or as long as it did in 2007, and the mean temperature has been below zero. I've been to most greens to take a look for ice. Generally speaking, we have a 1/2 inch crust over top of 6 to 7 inches of "lite" corn snow followed by a very dense (dare I say "icy") surface layer. This is not very cohesive layer (i.e. it is snow that has melted and refroze into small ice chunks that have formed a loose association) and such a layer can be beneficial during the snow removal in the spring. We sometimes call it "snow blower ice"; however, the line between ice called "snow blower ice" and ice called"bobcat ice" is a thin one that you don't want to cross.

The one unsettling event this winter is what occurring under the tarps on 7 and 15. Our old tarp were replaced by a new style (see November 23 entry) and have created a situation I haven't seen before. The first image is of the surface on #7 Green under the tarp.

The increased exchange has allowed more moisture through than the previous tarps. The best way to describe the characteristics of the frozen water seen in this picture is to relate it to the hoar frost you see on trees during winter. It seems to be easily removed with a plastic snow shovel so along as it doesn't change form it may be nothing to worry about.

The next picture is of 15 green.

The moisture on this green has developed into a clear layer of thin ice that may have the effect of sealing off the surface. At present, the layer is very thin and is easily scraped away. One way to monitor what is happening under the ice is to dig down and remove the ice and "take a whiff". If things smell "green" I don't worry but if things smell like a slough I start to worry. The other problem seems to be that the tarp in sticking to the ice. As long as the ice gets no thicker and the tarp doesn't weld to the surface of the existing ice we should be able to get the green exposed and the ice melted early March (weather permitting). I will keep checking and doing the sniff test to see if things appear to be going south.

What's New and Possible Winter Scenarios

I guess the good news is there is nothing earth shattering to discuss. Most of the snow has all melted except for a very thin layer on the greens surface. The cold weather has caused most of the ground to freeze solid. That usually means there is little opportunity for disease until the spring melt. It also means it could take a while for stuff to get going in the spring since the soil temperature needs to be above 50degrees F (10 degrees C) to get good turf growth. Right now all we can do is look at present conditions and decide if they may impact the turf next spring and try to formulate a plan.

A little FYI: "Winter Kill", the catch all term for dead turf in the spring, can usually be attributed to one or a combination of the following:

1. Disease
2. Crown hydration/dehydration or freeze/thaw cycle
3. Ice
4. Direct Low Temperature Kill

For most situations water needs to be present in one form or another (i.e. liquid or ice) to cause damage to turf. Up to this point, luckily, the greens have had very little water flowing or freezing on the surface.

Another factor contributing to unhealthy turf is the level of the plants reserves. Once spring arrives and the turf begins to grow the severity of damage to the exposed turf from the extreme early winter conditions may be depended upon how much carbohydrates (CHO) the turf was able to store before the temperature dropped. Increased height of cut, fertilizer applications, and a warm ground to keep the soil and roots active all aid in CHO production and storage in the fall. This fall was challenging because of the ill timed snow falls and below normal temperatures affected our fall fertilizing schedule and, as a result, the turf may not have had sufficient opportunity to develop adequate CHO stores.

We have experienced just about every version of the above scenarios that I have laid out at one time or another. Luckily, they have been limited to certain areas and not over the entire golf course. Arrival of winter cause us to change gears but it doesn't stop us from thinking about the turf and what surprises may await us once the snow melts.

Snow and Tarping Greens

With winter looking a little more possible we began to wrap up some loose ends on the golf course. The only real significant thing left was to tarp the greens that are prone to ice damage. First we had to shovel off the skiff of snow that had stuck around before laying down the tarps.Unlike previous years, we left those greens we tarp exposed a bit longer so the ground could freeze. Some information coming out of Alberta suggests laying a tarp before the ground freezes may contribute to a condition called anoxia (lack of oxygen). Up until the spring of 2007 when #6 green was damaged we have never experienced any damage due to covering the greens. The picture above shows the damage from that year which was similar in appearance to greens at other golf courses that were discovered to have anoxic conditions during the winter of 2006. This year we've changed the style of tarp from an impermeable to a tarp with a looser weave that should allow gas exchange but limit water penetration. At present, we have around 2 to 3.5 inches snow throughout the course. This is still not enough to buffer any significant rain event. We will keep an eye on the forecast and try to make the right choices if it looks like rain. I'll keep snow and course conditions updated over the next few weeks but unless things get funky the entries will be short and sweet.

Typical Fall Work

This past week had us scouting, falling, limbing, and removing pine trees infected with Mountain pine beetle and the Western pine beetle.

We had to remove around 65 trees from infected pockets scattered throughout the golf course property. This is amount of trees is similar to previous years. Areas where trees were removed include 1 fairway, 10 fairway, 12 tee, 14 tee, 14 fairway, and 16 fairway. Most of these areas are known to us so we knew where to start looking and weren't to surprised when we found infected trees. We were a little surprised to find more of the Ponderosa (Bull Pine) had been hit by the Western pine beetle. So far the Western seems to have a preference for the smaller trees in "out of the way" locations.

Logs from the trees were stacked in staging areas and then transported to a local mill.


Other tree work this time of year includes the application of drain tile to tree limbs to stop the deer from damaging the bark with their antlers.

Fall Paving

This falls project has been the renovation of select cart paths on the golf course and repaving a portion of the parking lot. You can go to the KGC home page to see a description of the cart path portion of the project. Most of the work was done after closing so I'll post some pictures with descriptions here.
The earlier weather impacted the paving contractors work schedule at other locations and, as a result, the work that was suppose to be completed by the contractor on the golf course was pushed back until spring 2010.

We began by removing the old pavement and digging out the roots causing the humps in the cart paths.

We used a chain trencher to cut any roots next to the paths with the hope of delaying any damage to the paths in the future. We then hauled 200 tonnes of road crush with our utility vehicles to fill in all the excavated cart paths on the golf course. Work then stopped and will begin again in the spring with final grading and paving of the paths.

The project that was completed involved paving a path to the members cart storage area and repaving the parking lot by the Johns cart storage to add more parking spots.

Early Snow

The snow at the beginning of the week was unfortunate since we had not finished treating some tee's and all the back fairways. By Tuesday snow had settled to about 2.5" . With only a couple inches and the possibility of rain and I made the choice to remove all the snow from the greens to lessen the chance of ice forming.

It took 2 days and four 9 h.p. track snow blowers to expose all the greens.

Traditionally, the snow before Halloween will melt but I choose not to take that risk and we began to plough those fairways that had not been sprayed yet. We started on the flat, smooth and firm fairways first and by Friday we were done removing a bulk of the snow from those areas we needed to treat.

The warm temperatures and rain melted the remaining snow on Saturday and we began to treat those area we missed on Saturday and Sunday.