Aeration and weather... What a Mess!

It is that time of year that spring arrives and the process of aeration begins.  This vital practice is not a favorite of anyone, but the goal of setting up the plant for a season of good health is the driving force.  Most turfgrass plants actually have more rooting in the spring than anytime else.  The chance to improve air exchange, reduce organic matter and drive rooting are the primary reasons we implement this practice.

Our staff does not enjoy the process; long hours, lots of backbreaking work, days of blowing and sweeping, and machine breakdowns make our jobs harder.  Needless to say, we are not fans of aeration but we realize the important benefits.

This year the weather is the factor that has made this process even more difficult.  To get the best results we like a dry firm surface, take a clean medium sized core, then apply dry sand and work that into all the holes.  The most important part is dry workable sand.  When we remove cores, the surface of the green is very soft.  To properly firm that surface back up, applications of nearly 30 to 40 tons of sand are applied to the greens and worked into the holes by hand and machine.  This allows us to firm the greens back into playing shape in a relatively short time.  The holes close faster and the surface smooths out in about two weeks.  Not bad considering we induced nearly 250,000 holes per green.

With rain during the process, we have lost the ability to apply the required sand, and most importantly the ability to move it into the open holes.  Brushing wet sand is akin to using sandpaper for a wash mitt on your cars paint.  In addition, we have no method to prepare the surface for play, rolling only picks up debris and spreads it over the entire surface and the wet remains are nearly impossible to blow away.


 The picture below show some of the issues when working with wet sand.  The sand pile contains wet and dry sand which spreads differently.  Couple this with a machine, it's speed, hydraulic loads and then sand inconsistency and a wet surface, there are a lot of variables in play.  Trying to get uniformity across the surface is a lesson in frustration when conditions are not optimal.

Left side heavy and wet;  right side we hit a dry patch in the pile

 This year we reduced the size of the holes from 1/2"  to 3/8" knowing we could not move the wet sand into the openings.  Second we applied a lighter sand topdressing with the hopes of applying more later on to help smooth out the greens.  The effect on play will be bumpy greens with more debris on the ball in the morning dew.  Our usual practice of not mowing for two days to allow the grass to recover and grow through the sand may be changed due to the practicality of trying to make the greens playable.

So why not just perform the process when dry? The dates are set far in advance and no rain dates provided, so to ge the most benefit we must change the practice, but still continue on and work around the weather constraint.  I'm sure in time all things will even out with extra topdressing and some handwork, but right out of the gate conditions will less than what you may have come to expect.

Poa Greens and Springtime

Well it has been quite a spring so far.  The coldest recorded March since 1931, and an April that has seen 90 degrees along with a very late frost this morning.  It is certainly hard to determine what mode the grass is in, much less determine what practice to employ next.  It is always this time of year that our greens undergo a radical change; poa seeding time.

Poa annua is labeled a winter annual, although for our greens it becomes a perennial that seeds every year. Poa is one of the rare plants that can seed at the heights we mow greens.  Our attempts to control seedheads is based on several environmental factors.  We use models that use a method called degree days.  These have been developed by several universities and others that use minimum and maximum temperatures to determine the optimum seeding time, or as we refer to it the pre boot stage.  In conjunction we look at blooming of other species and our gut feel for the best timing to apply growth regulators that may inhibit the seeding.

As with most things in nature there is no absolute.  Fluctuations in winter weather, storms and rains can all change this equation.  Additionally the products we use are useful in this process, but offer no guarantee for  success.  In fact, many times we have had good success, only to see the seed heads slowly and sporadicly pop out all summer long.  As I like to point out,  Nature finds a way.

Obviously putting quality suffers when the surface get bumpy, and seed heads create an uneven surface.  Many question if we have changed our mowing heights or practices.  The short answer is no, heights are the same as usual, in fact we increase the amount of rolling in hope of smoothing the surface.  Due to the dissimilar growth rates of poa and bent grass, we see little grass when mowing and most of it is poa seed heads.  Usually after our aeration, temperatures begin to rise, seeding season subsides and the greens start to resemble the condition we see the rest of the year.

In the picture shown, the darker purple areas are bent grass, which as you can see comprise only a small  percentage of our greens surface.

We work hard to manage our poa greens to withstand the stress of the seasons, and this includes understanding the effects of all practices performed.  Poa seeding isn't fun for anyone, but trying to change the plants natural instincts can have adverse effects the rest of the season.  We continually research products, university trials as well as discussions with other superintendents to evaluate our process in the hopes to continually improve conditions for all seasons.

Update on 11 Hillside

As the golf season opens and your getting your first looks of the course, many of you have seen the work being performed on the hill above 11 green.  I have described earlier in this blog our efforts to improve this little slice of the course and have great hopes that we can make this a pleasing backdrop to the 11th hole.

It had fallen to the ever increasing reach of invasive weeds and vines, that are prone in areas of direct sun.  The trees and shrubs had taken a toll from the storms and snows that broke many of the plantings including the azaleas.  We rescued as many as we could that were in good condition and moved them to the area around the ninth green to showcase that area.

In order to fit all the work into our schedule we had to begin the clearing stages of the hill, to ensure there were no obstacles that required larger equipment (stumps, rock etc) and then schedule the time to begin the building of a rock wall and shaping of the slope.  The next phase will include those operations followed by the planting of several trees and some shrubs.  The entire area will be mulched and given a finished look until fall, when the rest of the planting will occur.

As I stated last time, due to the invasive nature of the weeds, we keep these areas clear for a period of time to give us room to spray the necessary chemicals to "clean up" the beds before we start serious plantings.  The last thing we want is to have to tear out the plants due to being immediately invaded.  Many of these weeds are very aggressive and required multiple applications of herbicides to eradicate.  Similar practices have proved effective in our efforts at the right of 3, where we are now starting to plant new redbuds and dogwoods, and left of 8 where we will agin start to plant flowering trees later this fall.

This landscape area is quite large, and there is much work yet to be performed on the rest of property.  At this time of year with all the emphasis on grooming and preparing a golf course for the playing season, if we get behind in trying to hand weed an area, then we have lost it for the year.  This is why we try to make sure these new cleared areas are easy to treat and allow us to keep a better eye on them before they become problems.  With all the work that is involved with the course, bringing a new irrigation system on line and the weather that spring brings we have not forgotten this hillside is in the eye of the members.

I can assure you we do plan to clean this up and have it looking good for the season and we hope it becomes a backdrop that makes you pause for a second before you start your backswing to the back pin location on 11 green.

It's not dead, it's Bermuda grass!

The mens tee at the 9th hole and the back two tees at the 14th tee are now Bermuda grass.  We used a new variety called Latitude 36 for its finer leaf texture and early and late color.  These teeing areas were a combination of cool season grasses, which always were beaten up by the time mid summer arrives.  The problem is a lot of play coupled with some of the smallest tees on the course.  Par 3 tees in general are always the toughest to keep in good playing condition.  Trying to accelerate the growth of cool season grasses in the heat of summer leads to many issues; diseases, overseeding, and heavy watering all in the hopes to survive

Bermuda grass is very aggresive in the heat of summer and is less prone to disease and insects.  We can continue to push these tees with fertilizer no matter the temperature, which we hope allows us to provide a better teeing surface all summer long.  The grass goes dormant after the first frosts of winter, thus the tan color.

In my opinion, we needed to try another approach since we always struggled with the surface that was there and then spent most of the fall trying to regrow the tees before winter sets.  If this fails we can always revert back to cool season grasses at the end of summer like we usually do, but I think this is a better approach to solving a problem that has no easy answers.

It's starting to rain!

Well the irrigation system is finally taking shape.  The system is fully installed, pump houses up and running and fine tuning starting to take place.  In the coming weeks you will see heads that weep, sprinklers popping up from time to time and many of our staff on our hands and knees adjusting and documenting the settings we have made.  This part of the process is very time consuming, but necessary to begin to take advantage of all the benefits of our new system.

Because we did not have access to water during the installation we have a lot of flushing of old debris that has been sitting in pipes for the past 6 months.  This all takes time to work itself out and develop a good seal on all the sprinklers.  If you see anything odd please find myself or notify anyone on my staff and we will look at it immediately.

This photo demonstrates some of our capability and the excitment we have when we see 10 sprinklers running at the same time and they are all only watering the rough!  We can't wait to tweak this system to match the golf course.  In the meantime please excuse us while we try to learn the system and I apologize if we surprise you with a random sprinkler turning on near you.