Keep Your Fingers Crossed.

Short update.  Luckily the snow has been slowly accumulating and any little amount we get moves us further away from the "death zone" (go HERE for explanation).  The forecast is still for rain with above freezing temperatures for the low on Friday which is not great but the good news is it appears to be very short lived since for Saturday the forecast high is -12.  I know I've expressed my displeasure with November before and this year is doing nothing to change my attitude.  I was unable to put the tarp back on #9 mostly because the initial snow never melted and I wasn't to thrilled about blowing it off.

On Monday, the forecast was periods of rain Thursday and Friday with above freezing temperatures over night.  I watched the weather and had that forecast stayed the same I would have started snow blowing the green surfaces on Tuesday.   However, snow overnight on Monday and period of rain changing to 60% showers on Thursday and just rain for Friday (not periods of rain, when they say that experience tells me its going to pour!) have made snow blowing greens less likely.  Also, compounded by the fact that it is snowing right now, I am hopeful we will have enough of a snow cover to be able to absorb any moisture in the form of rain without creating surface ice.....we'll see if that is the case in about 48 hours.

First draft of budget is done and once Novembers numbers are in I'll be able to take a closer look at where time and money was spent.  Already, I know there was 1200 less staff hours in my department this year versus 2013.  I'll take a closer look and let you know what was different this year.

I thought it would be fun to post pictures of the wildlife that is around the golf course when there is no play.  I bought a trail/game camera on sale this fall and put it up in various spots.  I had a fair amount of deer and elk pictures but none were great to I set the camera up near 2 green on a heavily traveled game trail just over the bank.  Some pr*ck stole it!  I'm obviously naive or people are jerks...or both!  Anyways, the only wild life out of the ordinary for us is these guys:

Dudes, go south!

The fact these geese are sticking around is bugging me.  Hopefully, it's not because they think the snow is going to melt and more because of the poor flying weather (?).  We watched a coyote take a run at this flock and he struck out.  I like them it's too bad they are messy.

Ketchup....Catch up?

.....meaningful titles are sometimes hard to come by.  Anyways, here's what's been happening over the past couple days.  Last weekends forecast was pretty much on the nose regarding snow and cold.  I went out on Sunday and put down the tarps and Enkamat before the weather hit but had to tweak the process a bit.  Like I mentioned before, since we were unable to afford more Enkamat, I had planned to split it up amongst the greens that I think may need it the most.  The new tarp for #15 green scared me because it is so 'impermeable-like" (remember anoixia? go HERE) so I used the Enkamat to cover close to 80% of the green to maintain an air gap before rolling out the new tarp.  The remaining Enkamat was only able to cover a little less than 2/3's of #7 green (which is where the other impermeable tarp is located).  So, obviously, the upper putting green, the back of #9 green and the lower tier of #6 green do not have any Enkamat.  This is too bad since the condition of these surfaces in the spring were pretty good and  I think that was partly due to the Enkamat.

The one unfortunate part with the arrival of winter at the beginning of the week was the wind that preceded the system.  I staple the tarps to the ground and generally add extra on the side of any edge facing the prevailing wind.  The wind last Sunday night was the dreaded "backwards wind" which meant it blew completely opposite to the way it normals comes.  The end result was the semi-permeable tarp on #9 blew off.  I've decided not to remove the snow from the green and expose it to all the predicted cold temperatures.  I'll try to fix the tarp later.

I've mostly been inside during the mornings either reviewing expenses or looking into ideas I've had during the summer but didn't have time to investigate (for example, I think I've found a way to use my phones GPS and Google Maps to record and store in the "cloud" the fertilizer and/or chemical applications we make during the season.  With that information we can be somewhat more accurate with our record keeping...something that may be a requirement in the ever changing "landscape" of pesticide regulations.)  The rest of the day I continue to prepare equipment or areas of the golf course for winter.

One more thing.   During the summer when I received positive comments about the condition of the course I would, at some point during the conversation, say something like "it's been a good year to grow grass" or something along that line.   I wasn't trying to be modest but I was instead making an observation.  An article written by an agronomist from the USGA Green Section comments on course conditions as they relate to weather.  To be fair the article seems more to be referencing an apparent habit of players to equate good conditions with good weather while ignoring the importance of a superintendent and blaming the superintendent entirely for poor conditions while completely disregarding the impact of bad weather.  Thankfully, to this point in time, that has never been a huge problem at this club for me.  What I like about the article is the last two paragraphs which have a simple math equation that can be used to sum up course conditions in a succinct manner.  Again, the gist of the article isn't overly applicable to our/my situation but it is some food for thought.  Take a look HERE to read it.

Post Season Preparedness and Activities

As fall weather goes this year has been in the top 5.  Since the last day of play there has been half dozen or so frost days and only a few rainy days with most of those occurring within the last week.  Since its only been me for the last 2 weeks the nice weather has made it easy to get things buttoned up with the only thing left to do is lay out the tarps.  With respect to the tarps I had to replace #7 old tarp since it was badly torn and had numerous holes.  Unfortunately, that means there was no money to buy more Enkamat (go HERE for reminder) which is disappointing since I've been pleased with the outcome where I've used Enkamat under the tarps.  I may divide up whatever Enkamat we have to half-ass cover areas on the greens under the tarps; especially under impermeable tarps.

The mild fall has meant a bit more disease popping up on fairways, even on those fairways I treated.

Microdochium Patch, 14 Fwy

I would guess that the disease began developing before I sprayed but I am comfortable that most fairways were treated before the disease really took hold as it obviously has in the preceding picture.  Untreated fairways are definitely showing disease but they always do.  Timing the sprays is tricky and I've talked about it before (go HERE) but time constraints, staffing, costs of the chemical, and the mode of action of the treatment all mean I have to make an somewhat educated guess when the spray has to go down.  As it stands now this season is shaping up as a high disease pressure year; especially if we get a permanent snow cover before the ground has time to freeze (and personally when it comes to that I like unfrozen ground since water from any winter rain will soak in versus freeze into a ice sheet).

For the fall sprays I did my usual random experiments comparing different chemicals and different rates on certain fairways. 

18 Fwy: Instrata vs Trilogy

8 Fwy: Different Application Rates

By not spraying the entire fairway on certain holes I can compare chemical efficacy in relation to disease occurrence on non-treated areas.  This year I also picked spots on some fairways (1,10,12,13) where I did not spray to monitor efficacy and to get people appreciating or understanding the necessity of winter treatments.  To make it fun I choose a few of the fairways and deliberately left a particular geometrical shape so as to catch your eyes and deflect criticisms from other "turfies" who may think I just zoned out and made a mistake.  Just one more reason to anticipate next golf season!

Again with respect to the weather most areas had time to do some catch up on root mass since I wasn't mowing and your weren't playing (Go HERE for deep tine and root review)

Token End of Season Root Pict to Make me Sleep Better

Other greens are always the same this time of year and always amaze the hell out of me each spring and fall or whenever they make it through the stress with surviving grass.

#2 Green after Deep Tine, Antithesis of Previous Photo

I am pretty sure I can grow roots as this picture shows:

10 inches of  Poa Roots

This is a plug I took from the collar around a green where we bury hollow sleeves used to hold up the fence posts around select greens.  This picture shows what aeration can do if you commit.  I could talk tonnes about the potential this picture shows but the panicky looks I get when I say we will be pulling a half inch core three to four inches deep tells me support would be hard to come by (believe or not but there are machines which can remove a "core" that big and deep and then refill with sand all at the same time!).

I suspect my next post will involve numbers or something like that since we are entering the fantasy/planning stages of next years budget.

Writer's Block or Fatigue or....

.... not much new.  Stuff is going on but it's all the same sh*t just a different pile.  It's hard not feel like we're spinning our wheels but I guess the grass is still growing and the doors are still open so it could be way worse.  I'll try to be brief and cover some events from the past 2 months.

River/Irrigation

Our channel at the river pretty much dried up in September and we had to be very judicious with the irrigation.  Luckily, we had a nice rain at the beginning of the month that carried us for a bit but that was short lived with the sunny weather for the rest of the month.  I was running on empty so fortunately some investigating into our water license by another individual from the board of directors revealed we had the option to divert the river.  Great news that somewhat pissed me off because in all my dealing with the ministry that was never mentioned as an option.  I learned not only to ask for help but also never assume the government is telling you everything.  End result was from this:

to this:

The only problem was by the time we had the flow to pumps we ran out of time to pull from the river so we never completely re-charged the reservoir.  Hopefully the river stays the same for spring and we will still have the flow at our intake to fill the reservoir and meet our spring irrigation demands.  At present, it appears low water flow is less of an issue for us but we still have the problem of pumping dirty water during spring run off which wears out our pumps and costs us thousands of dollars.  I still believe we need to connect to the city water line to address this issue but the potential cost is forestalling the inevitable.  We'll look into other options over the winter and hopefully we'll have a plan in place before I start up the pumps next spring.

Equipment

We managed to make it through another year and only had to add one utility vehicle and one triplex mower to our junk/obsolete pile at the shop.  Again, by the end of the season I had pretty much had it and did a "dog and pony" show in an attempt, one more time, to demonstrate how dire our situation is.  I've always assumed people knew how beat up and old the equipment was since dilapidated pieces seemed to have been randomly plunked all over the course throughout the years in various states of disrepair but I think because they were always pieced back together and made operational people don't really appreciate our situation.  As always, quantifying a situation helps.  Saying a mower has 4000 hours means very little to most individuals but if you equate hours to miles people may begin to understand what "old" means golf course mower wise.  A reference I found (GO HERE) equates 500 hours on a mower to 125 000 miles (that's 240 000 km!) on a car so 4000 hours is similar to 1 000 000 car miles.  All of our equipment has more than 1500 hours and a majority has greater than 2500 hours with some pushing 6000 hours.  Even if you cut this estimate in half our machines are old.  Luckily, the club had a somewhat OK year so we've updated our old stuff with some used stuff.....

it's a start.

Finally, some pictures worth viewing.  The first one is of a pot located near the bag drop area.  Someone put a smoldering cigarette in the pot and when I showed up in the morning the pot had completely melted away and the wooden step next to the pot had burnt.  Take home message is to look for an ash tray instead of the closest receptacle to litter with your cigarette butt.

Click Picture

This next one is was from a couple weeks ago looking from #1 tee and could pass for a guy in a bear suit sitting on a branch.

I found this robin staring at his shadow just outside the golf shop one morning.  There was a large collection of birds gorging on the mountain ash berries on 4 tee and folk lore has birds getting drunk if they eat too much (go HERE) so perhaps this bird was a little funked up.  I put him on Sam's Bench to ride the buzz out and he either eventually flew away or ...?

Hammered?

Right now its winter prep time and this year we are doing a little tweaking of the irrigation  and a small bit of work in #7 bunker.  There has been some difficulties winterizing the irrigation but other than that its the usual routine which I'll try to touch on in later posts. 

The "A" word and River Update #2

The first three weeks in August were somewhat boring since two tournaments will occur two weeks apart so all we have really been trying to do is keep the grass mowed....not an easy task this year (which I guess is way better than the alternative, i.e. not having any grass to mow!).

And now for something completely different.  If I had my way I would love to aerate the greens just after the August long weekend since recovery would be quick and by the time the turf began to grow new roots we would be very close to raising the HOC which would mean even more opportunity to grow roots (generally, the more roots the better turf can handle stress).  The reason I bring this up relates to the condition of the fairways this year during the long heat spell we experienced.  I have spent most of the summer amazed and confused at how well the fairways have looked.  When you do the same thing from year to year you expect similar results so when you get those years where things are different from normal (good or bad) you sorta want to know why... at least I do!

I don't compare conditions between courses since there are so many different variables but I do ask in general what other golf courses are experiencing turf growth/health wise.  If it's similar to what is happening at KGC I credit/blame the weather.  If conditions are different than what KGC is experiencing I look at what I am doing different and try to come up with answers as to why things differ.  To be honest,  growing turf is as much an art as it is a science so many of my conclusion are complete guesses.  So this year my guess as to why we had good fairways is three fold. (Oops!  After re-reading that last paragraph I seem to be implying that KGC fwys are better than other golf course.....not what I mean.  What I meant was the fwys at KGC are better this year than they have been other years; no arguing that point!)

1. We are mowing fairways way less than in the past.  Perhaps less traffic and less mechanical stress associated with cutting the fairway is allowing the turf to direct its energies into increasing stand density versus expending energy to repair damaged tissues and recuperate from mowing stress. 
2.  The last couple years, due to staffing, we aerated our fairways very early compared to waiting until late fall.   I suspect by aerating early the turf has had time to recover and establish new roots which allow it to better handle stress.  
3. Our continued effort in late spring/early summer to aerate, over-seed and top dress areas I know are prone to showing heat/moisture stress during the growing season.

We will aerate early again this year so I'll be interested to see if the fairways grow the same in 2015.  I guess, being a grass farmer, I can't completely ignore the weather conditions over the past 2 years as well.  Both 2013 and 2014 springs and winters were good for grass (not overly hot and plenty of moisture in the spring and good snow cover with no real ice during the winter months) and I know that helps. 

River Watch

We've been able to keep one pump running by putting in about 10 to 12 man hours moving rocks.  In preparation for the vacuum truck next week I had a back hoe come down and clean out directly in front of our intake. Obviously, the rain at the end of the week brought up the river and allowed me to shut off the irrigation and catch up on filling the reservoir so we are sitting pretty good for the next little bit.  There is possibly some things in the works to help us with our water woes at the river but I'll keep it vague until I can give you more information.

Golden Trees at Kimberly and River Update #1

Unlike the Sitka spruce that grew on Haida Gwaii (go HERE), golden conifers on the golf course mean trouble.

Picea not-lookin-so-goodica

One of the group of pines planted between 6 tee and 9 green finally went funky.  Those trees were sort of seconds from a local nursery and the middle one has always been a funny tree that finally had enough.  I don't believe the trees demise was beetle related but most likely something specific to that particular tree (there is a thing called pine wilt caused by a nematode but you need to send sample to lab for conformation.  If it is pine wilt you basically remove the wood, chip it, and burn or bury it.  We're going to do that anyways so paying for a diagnosis is somewhat mute.)  I'll replace it but not until the weather is better (i.e. not as hot and dry)

We wrapped a pink ribbon around a Ponderosa pine on the left of #14 down by the fairway bunker on the right side.

Beetle Kill Ponderosa, Right #14 Fwy

That is pine beetle and we missed it last fall.  Truthfully, we never really had the time to scout let alone remove any pine beetle trees since all staff but myself and the mechanic were pretty much laid off once play was finished.  A short term gain budget wise but the long term cost will be more trees lost to pine beetle and, unfortunately for us, the trees are what makes KGC a golf course.

River Watch

I started doing this couple years ago and in a year with all the heat we've had and so little rain we are really depending on the river to supply us with water until the cooler weather comes.

Flow at River Intake, July 28

At the time of the July 28th picture the pumps were still supplying about 325 GPM to the reservoir (versus around 425 GPM previously throughout the season).  As it stands now this is what we got:

Flow at River Intake, August 5th

 What makes this an auspicious day is the drop in flow at the river now means we can only pump around 210 GPM which means over a 24 hour period the most we can pump is 302400 gallons.  Up to this point in time the golf course sees about 450 000 to 480 000 gallons of water a night.  Obviously, each time we irrigate we will unable to replace over 150 000 gallons in the reservoir so based on the reservoir capacity we will run out of water in 28 days, i.e. September 2.  Again, obviously, I will stop irrigating areas and we should start to use less water but even with those measures I don't see us getting much past the middle of the month.  A Couple years ago the City allowed us to use the fire hydrant to supply us with water but a letter from the Operations Department this spring said that was a "one time deal".  Our quickest option it to tie into the Mathew Creek line that runs through the golf course via a new connection installed by the city.  We would then have to connect to our system.  Both options cost $$$ and we would have to pay the city up front and pay for a contractor to connect to our system.

This whole situation is getting old and is giving me grey hair and wrinkles. (Go HERE to review 2012's river problems.).  We really need to be responsible and look at viable alternatives and commit to addressing the low river/dirty river situations before our luck runs out.

That Was a Quick 31 Days

Over a month since a post.  July flew by and already I have to drive to work with the truck headlights on.

So whats been happening on the course?  Mostly good stuff with only a few typical "situations".  It's seems like old news but I'll comment on some small projects completed over the past couple months.  The new sponsor sign has been erected next to #1 tee and is filling up with the three levels of sponsors.  The construction side of the project was completed with volunteer member labour with the only costs being the materials for the structure and the printing of the signs.

Completed Sign With Sponsors

Another completed projected was the flowerbed redo at 4T that I mentioned in the last post.  By far the coolest thing about that project was the donations received from the members.  Alison W. got the ball rolling by donating her 50/50 prize from a Friday night social.  Soon the players from the Rose Bowl tournament voted to donate all unclaimed deuce pot money from their tournament.  A couple more 50/50's and from Ethel J. and Sue O. and all of a sudden it began to look like the "crowdfunding" idea had struck a cord with a certain group of people.  To date there has been over $400 contributed.  I basically used a portion of that money to plant the 4T flowerbed and buy the extra concrete caps needed to "finish" the project (finish is in quotes since I was unable to get the same colour and style cap to match the old style we salvaged so it looks a bit awkward)

Adding and Amending Root Zone

Mixing It Up

Finished Flower Bed

I was very excited and happy to see the response from my desperate plea at the AGM.  People either appreciate our situation or took pity on me.  Whatever the case may have been I was happy to have the cash to do a little something extra and I believe people are pleased with the result.  Is it too bold to ask for more?  Imagine, redoing a weak tee or adding extra tees to make the course more player friendly?  Maybe keep updating/renovating the existing flower beds?  If you've got a bee in your bonnet share it with me and maybe we can find proponents and who knows what can happen!