The Great White Experiment

By now you are wondering what is going on along the cart paths.  Long stretches of white turf and weeds, punctuated by areas of green grass.  Alien invasion, a new disease.... nope, just an experiment and an example of the challenges of our multiple types of turf.

 This is Bermuda grass sprayed once with a new compound that suppresses bermuda and several types of weeds.  If we decided to try to reduce or eliminate the bermuda what is the reaction to the turf under its normal summer conditions.  As you can see it has stripped the plant of chlorophyll and weakened the turf.  Multiple applications may eliminate this turf along with multiple weeds at the same time.

Is this something we want?  Our rough consists of 5 to 7 varieties of grass, all different textures and growth habits.  All of them are cool season except the Bermuda grass.  In the spring and late fall it leads to many inconsistencies in the rough.  Of great interest is if we spend money to sod areas with a more desirable species can we stop the bermuda invasion in the summer.

From this test I would say yes,  but at what cost on a large scale?  Do you want to see this look for years to come as we try to reduce the overall population or is it better to play what we have?  As can be seen there is a lot of Bermuda.  In fact when a specific species dies, or becomes diseased you notice how much of the property is covered by that turf.  In our case major areas have a large percentage of Bermuda, the right side of 8 rough below the hill is almost entirely Bermuda.  This grass can make finding a ball extremely tough in the summer months as it nestles to the bottom.

The picture below shows the effect on the 3rd fairway.  Here the test is a little less harsh, and the chance to reduce Bermuda from the Bentgrass fairway is more acceptable.  This is one we would like to pursue, although if we do not attack the rough, this will continue to be an issue, since it creeps in from the edges.

The discoloration of the bentgrass is a little less evident after a few days, but the bermuda is still discolored.  It will take multiple applications to reduce these populations to levels considered to be under control.  Once again, your never sure how much Bermuda you have until you spray the entire surface.  We will continue to evaluate this product over the next few months with repeat applications to some fairway areas and some recent sod to determine how well it accomplishes the task.

As a reference on the strength of this product, the entire 5 acres treated contained only 1.25 ounces of product in 300 gallons of water.  Extremely effective I would say, now I only need to calibrate an eyedropper to measure the dosage!

Trouble on the greens

By the start of next week, I'm sure many will be wondering what happened to the greens at 4 and 5.  Basically they failed under the heat of the July 4th weekend.  Why this happened has multiple causal agents.  Not all understood but this goes back not only to this season, but many years before when these greens were built.

The trouble this year is related to several factors, some direct, some unknown, but all play a part in the health of the plant.  This was the year that Poa annua seeded, no matter what the method to prevent it, it happened.  A long warm winter with rainfall, created a condition that was hard to judge when seedlings would arrive.

The products we use to inhibit seed heads on the greens all require timing to what is happening in the plant.  The timing is more art than science and different areas and greens types seed at different times than others.  Why is this important, well the plant uses a tremendous amount of energy to produce a seed.  This energy expends carbohydrates stored in the roots to push the seed out.  This energy stored is what we count on for the plant to use to promote rooting going into the summer.  Thus a lot of seed heads makes for  a weaker plant to start the year.  Coupled with the intensive amount of maintenance to smooth out the greens, the plant basically arrives at summer with short roots and no energy reserves.

Earlier this year we were beset by a disease called bacterial wilt.  This specific pathogen only affects poa annua on the greens.  There are no preventative or curative products for this pathogen.  The cure is to promote good health in the plant, which is usually counter to the ability to achieve greens speeds that membership requires.  The effect of this disease was to weaken plants and reduce rooting even further.  The worst outbreaks were on the 4th, 5th, 6th, 16th and 17th greens.

Practices were put into place to promote better health and things were turing around.  The 4th and 5th green were still struggling ( more on this latter).  The extended wet weather lead to shallow rooting.  If the plant does not have to reach for water and oxygen is depleted ( as in a water saturated soil),  roots move up in the profile.  Couple this shallow rooting with several very hot dry days and the  plant goes from drowning to wilting quickly.  Of course all of this also happened on the weekend of the Club Championship, when we are trying to get the best greens condition possible.

Pictured below was the start of the problem of bacterial wilt back in early June on the 4th green.

Below is what was observed this morning July 7th.

The course of action now will be to coax both these greens back to health, which is always tricky in the heat of summer.  Some plugging, some seeding , some fertilizing and a lot of gentle practices will be the  order of the day for the next few weeks.


Now how do these issues all relate?  Well the most problematic greens on the course are both the 4th and 5th greens.  The 4th green contains a lot of silt, which happened when the last rebuild occurred many years ago.  This causes the green to hold excessive moisture.  We have added a fan, as well as installing drain lines to help improve the surface, but this still only helps in certain cases.  The excess moisture in the green reduces rooting, and causes the soil to become anaerobic ( low oxygen) during much of the year.  Aeration and sanding along with all the other tactics only help so much.  We really require a dry year and some luck to get this green to perform well.

The 5th green has had many struggles over the years.  It too was rebuilt many years ago and I believe the poa annua grass in this green is a weaker species than the others.  The green was originally seeded to bent and was taken over by poa annua from the rough.  It's adaptation to greens poa annua has not been good and the struggle continues.

Both greens have been tested extensively for physical and chemical makeup with no major deficiencies noted.  Our next step will be to test for any long term herbicide residual that may be present just to determine if old treatments may be inhibiting rooting in these greens.  We will continue to solve the issues present, but many times, environment wins and we do our best to work around what nature throws our way.  The heart of this is the grass itself.  In no cases have we seen bentgrass affected, only poa annua, which for us is the majority of the grass on the greens with the exception of the 8th green.

A lot has happened

It's been a while since I last posted and I hope to provide some catch up to everyone reading this.  The first and foremost is the weather.  June turned out to be the fourth wettest on record.  This has made things very lush, but also set up up for some rather delicate issues for the summer.

First this is what the radar seems to look like day after day.

Once the rain has come and gone,  I then receive a posting of the diseases most like to be present during this period.  As you can see, almost every disease known to turfgrass is present.   The Poa annua on the greens is susceptible to almost all of these.

As soon as we plan a course of action again comes the rain making areas not only unplayable but unmanageable as well.  Not sure how to treat, mow or travel around in these conditions.

Once the sun comes out, this is usually what we find as we attempt to put things back together again.  The sand restoration process is about as miserable as it comes.  Shoveling wet heavy hand into washout areas and then removing the silt by hand, and reloading new sand back into the bunker.  If this happened once or twice it is a process that drains you physically for a day or two, but the repetitive nature of this years storms has made this a job no one wants to see their name attached to in the morning.

We hope to see a return to a normal pattern, But we know that the one thing we can count on is not knowing the pattern for the rest of the summer.

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.