Dead Poa Society

Normally when one looks at a green and see grass that is struggling or even dead, it would be cause for concern...

                                             notice the small patches of apparently dead grass

 But that is not the case here at The Meadow. The small patches of yellow grass you see in the above photo are patches of poa annua, a grass that is common to most every golf course you have ever played on, but one that we are pleased to see on its back foot. These poa plants are struggling for many reasons, some natural, and some intentional.
 The natural reason:
• Ice Damage - poa does not like dealing with ice at all in the winter. It generally does not like the winter much  at all, and many times is quite slow to wake up in the spring. But once it does decide to come around it usually fills in like crazy (unfortunately that could be sometime in late June...)
The man made reasons:
• We have been slowly tilting our cultural practices over the past couple of seasons to favor the bentgrass population in our greens, to the detriment of the poa plants. They include...
- Deep and Infrequent watering - poa like to keep its feet wet constantly, but bentgrass enjoys a tall glass of water every week to ten days. This practice encourages the bent to sink its roots deep into the soil profile, while the poa is left struggling at the surface (their roots penetrate 2-3" at best)
- Minimal disruption - brushing and late season aerifying are our most aggressive practices. Poa loves disturbance, so we try to keep it to a minimum.
- Lots of sand...lots and lots of sand...
- Chemical - we began using a product called Velocity last season in very limited quantities. This herbicide will take the poa without harming the bentgrass. This process will take a few seasons, but the results so far are encouraging.

 So the anti poa sediment will be a common theme that I will touch on a lot in the future...so stay tuned...

                                                  some more hurtin poa from #3 green

                                                              up close and personal

Spring update

Hi Everyone,

 Promptly after starting the blog I decided to rip my office apart and paint it from top to bottom, great for the office, but not so great for updating the blog (my computer was out of commission) Here is a pic of the finished product:

 I must say there is nothing like a fresh coat of paint to get the spring off on the right foot (you'd think i owned stock in a paint company!)

 But on to the golf course. I had a great post all set to go last week when summer decided to peek out for a few days. We had three days above 15degrees, with the last one getting as high as 23! Well that was last week...as I stare out my window right now we are having the first real Nor Easter of the season. It has been blowing all day, but thankfully not a lot of snow has fallen. No big deal really, the kids feel better after getting only their second snow day of the year! Below I will post a few pictures of the course that were taken on the 23 deg. day, what a glorious walk it was...

                                                           #8 fairway from the turn

                                                       The putting green melting slowly

                                                             # 3 green completely bare

                       #11 green from the back right( the black stuff is sunflower seeds, more on that later)

                                                                  #5 from the tees

                                                      #14 green (again with the seeds)

   Overall the course is looking quite good. I never like to get to excited one way or another, but I am feeling a lot better about the condition of things right now than I did a few weeks ago. The warm weather did wonders for melting off the ice and the turf looks healthy underneath. # 11 green did worry me a bit since it had had snow and ice covering it from back in December. Oddly enough it looked the best of all the greens.
  It was not only the warm weather that took care of the ice on the greens. Back in early January, the end of January, the end of February, and even last week we were out spreading either dark sand or black oil sunflower seeds on the ice to speed up the melt. The dark color of the seeds and sand eats through the ice quite a bit faster, thus speeding up the melt. A shout out to Finn and an even bigger shout out to my 9 year old son Lucas for helping with the process.
  So the next step will be removing the covers from the greens. I have not been enjoying this part of the job over the last couple of seasons as we left them on a bit to long and the greens grew like crazy...

                                              pretty straight lines, but way to many clipping...

 Many would question why this would be an issue, after all growing grass is what we do right? But no that is not what we do. In my mind our main job is to prepare a great surface on which to play the game of golf. Grass growing like crazy does not lend itself to great playing conditions. It also does not help the greens to be growing at an unnatural rate first thing in the spring. To much growth leaves them shocked when the colder weather inevitably sets back in through late April and early May. So the goal in the next couple of weeks will be to peel off the tarps before we get a big flush of growth, just long enough to wake the up a bit, but not so ling as to require a major haircut. I will speak more on this subject during the next while.
Thanks so much,
Paul . 


                            

Not so n ice...

                                            This is what the greens look like under the snow...

  It has been another fascinating winter here on the Island. No real snow accumulation until the end of January, lot's of temperature fluctuation, some rain, and lot's of sleepless nights for Superintendents. We had a particularly interesting weather event back on January 27th that gave us the conditions you see in the above picture. Instead of an all out snowstorm, we got a snow/freezing rain/rain event that left a solid 1-2' layer of ice on the the whole golf course. Not so good. But I am encouraged by what we are seeing lately.

                                                                Notice the layer of ice


                                 Below are a couple of plugs that I removed from the 6th  green.

                             This first plug concerned me a bit. Notice the matted, off color turf.

This is the same plug a week later, living in the front window of the shop. Notice the healthy new growth.

  So how does this translate in to golfing terms?
Well at this point I am cautiously optimistic. The plugs I took out all grew well in the shop and that is a good sign. We also took to blowing off the greens to let the sun get at the ice layer and speed up the melting process. This worked really well, with a few of the first ones that were blown off actually baring off down to the turf. The good news is that the turf underneath looks healthy. That is not to say that we are out of the woods completely, but it is encouraging none the less.

Stay tuned for another update next week.
Thanks so much,
Paul m

First Post...

Good Day All,

 Welcome to the Fox Meadow Turf Department Blog. I will be using this platform to update and inform the patrons of Fox Meadow about the goings on in our Turf Department. There will be education, lots of updates on our projects and activities, and even a bit of fun. Stay tuned for all things turf here at the Meadow.