Guest Post

Sometimes as a superintendent you have something you want to say. You ponder it awhile, reflect...do a bit of research, and whammo someone else does it for you. I am posting a link to a fellow superintendent's blog to explain why we don't use tarps on the greens anymore. It has been one of the most common questions I have received since we made our decision to go tarpless.
  Chris Tritabaugh is a friend and superintendent at Hazeltine National Golf Club, located in Minnesota. They will be hosting the 2016 Ryder Cup matches. Chris took over at Hazeltine this time last year and has been working hard to transform the course to a predominantly bentgrass facility. That has been our goal on the greens here at Fox Meadow for the past few years, and not using covers is helping a lot.
winter covers why we will not be using them

Thanks for reading,
paul m

It's been a long time

Well it has definitely been a while since the last post (I was shocked to look back and see that it was July 11th). The summer is winding down and the leaves are beginning to turn.
  It was a pretty straight forward summer for the turf as a whole. We settled into our first full season of taking moisture readings and deep watering. It went really well and we will continue to tweak the program as we go forward.
  Project wise things were a bit slower than normal this season. We really had to choose our battles and so that meant doing things that did not break the bank. One such project involved rebuilding a few bunker faces on #6 and #8 greens. We used a method that I learned about from Canadian architect Ian Andrew. It involves using burlap bags filled with topsoil and the base, and then you simply sod over top. The burlap eventually degrades and you are left with a new edge.

                   This is the left greenside bunker on #6. You can see the bags as well as the sod.

The finished product

The next big project will be aeration. I know how much everyone loves this practice, but if you refer back to our post from this time last year explaining the process (the fall has come ?) I think we can all agree that it is necessary indeed.

  

The crew in action last year.

The 2013 aeration will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 15 (front 9) and Wednesday, Oct.16 (back 9). This obviously is weather dependent, but at this point the forecast is promising. 

I would be remiss if I did not pass on best wishes from the Turf Department for our soon to be departing General Manager, Harry Simmonds. Harry has been a wonderful person to work with over the past 5 years and his kind nature will be missed. He is moving on to a well earned retirement, and we wish him nothing but the best.

Thanks for reading

paul

Pretty Rountine...

  Well things are settling down here at the Turf Department. The spring flush of growth has subsided and that frees us up to do a lot more things around the course. It's pretty tough to get things done when you have to chase the mowers with blowers all day.
  The best part of things rounding into form is that the greens start to really shine. We have a very detailed program to keep the functioning properly, and it's nice when things work out. The quality of the surfaces will only continue to improve with our cultural practices like topdressing, deep watering, growth regulation, and rolling being implemented.
  Project wise things have been quiet lately. The last post discussed a few of the things that we finished up before the season got going, and to tell you the truth there is not many major things on the horizon. We are content at the moment to be working hard at making our routine as efficient as possible, spending a lot of time evaluating and tweaking how we prepare the course. As the season progresses we will identify projects for later in the fall. One that will continue will by the white tee resurfacing. The group we completed last fall worked out well and we have already identified the next batch that will be renovated this fall.
  So that's it in a nutshell. No news is good news at this point. Don't hesitate to stop by the shop our call us over if you have any concerns about the course. We are here to help.

P.S. I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you that a close friend of mine, Mark Perry, the former assistant super at Countryview golf club, has taken over the head superintendent position at Rustico Resort Golf & Tennis Club. Things have fallen a bit behind at Rustico over the past few years and Mark had been hired to turn things around. Give him a couple of seasons and I guarantee he will have Rustico in the best condition that it has ever been in.

                                                        Marks last day at Countryview


Thanks for reading
Paul m

Spring Fling

  Well it has been a spell since the last post, so I thought I would recap some of the projects we have been working on over the past few weeks. The first pictures though, are from this morning...

   This is what we are facing this week...a perfect storm of heat and moisture resulting in a lot of this...

 

Suffice it to say that we are doing our best to get things mowed and tidied up

Projects

 

This past week we were able to borrow an overseeder from our good friends at Countryview. This is Keith working on #8 fairway. 

 

This is a close up of the seed in the slits

You might have noticed a few more trees on the inside of the dogleg on #1. The lone birch is close to becoming firewood, so we thought we would begin repopulating the hedge.

 One of the big projects we embarked on last fall was a course wide landscape renovation. We evaluated each bed, divided, pruned, and reorganized plant material. The biggest offender was the bed located behind the 18th green. It has been a thorn in our side for a while and a complete facelift was the only answer.

A before shot

 

A pic from the ripping and tearing stage

The project involved removing the foot path, reorganizing plant material, and reducing the overall footprint of the bed itself.

The rough draft

A picture from this morning

An alternate angle

So far we are pleased with the results, we will continue to evaluate the bed as it matures and make corrections as needed.

You might of also noticed something missing from #9 green this spring. We removed the rear bunker and created a grass depression in it's place. The bunker was poorly designed from the get go and has proved to be a headache ever since...

This happened 4 times last season (twice in as many days in August) The bunker did not drain properly and the grade of the surrounding hill made the situation worse.

So we enlisted our good friend Lyle Robinson from Finishscapers to come and regrade the bunker and create a swale for the water to flow around the rear portion of the green.

The finish work and resodding begins

Getting closer...

The final product, no wash outs this summer!

So long story short, things have been busy here at the Meadow so far this season. We are slowly falling into our regular routine now and will be hitting our stride when our last student comes along at month's end. The greens are coming along nicely and are definitely rounding into form. There are no real big projects on the horizon for the near future. We will evaluate things closer to the fall and chose a few more things to work on then.

Thanks for reading.

 

Water, Water, Water

  Today, as I stared out the window watching the rain come down, I thought it might be a good time to continue our series on what makes greens great. The next chapter is going to focus on water; how we use it, how it can help, and how we get rid of to much of it.

 Irrigation

  We would not be able to produce the conditions day in and day out without irrigation. It can mean the difference between grass flourishing or checking out. Luckily we live in a very temperate maritime climate, so irrigation is not a matter of life or death for our turf...but it is very important.
  The nerve center of any solid irrigation system is the pump house. It is where the pump station is located (ours is below the back tee deck on #8). We are very fortunate to have a top quality system

                                           This is a fairly standard pump station set up

that is both dependable and reliable. Trust me when I say that old school irrigation set ups can be a bit of a nightmare...

 The next part of the system is piping, wiring, and the heads. The system runs hole by hole buried roughly 2' under the turf.

       This map is called an as built. It shows where the heads, piping, wiring, and valves are located.

Here is a good shot of the heads, attached to swing joints, which are in turn attached to the pipe. Also included in the photo is the wiring.

  The final component is the computer software that controls the system. This system sets up the schedules we use and controls when the water comes on. These systems are at the point where you can connect them to your smart phone and control things in the palm of your hand.

    We have dedicated staff that take care of the system on a regular basis. The two biggest jobs are usually priming the system in the spring and blowing it out in the fall. Quality control during both helps to ensure proper operations in the summer.

                  That's Paul and Keith fixing a particularly troublesome head on #17 last week

    With all this technology at your fingertips, the hardest thing for us is not using it. The easy answer to many problems is to throw some water on it. Funny thing is that watering to much only causes bigger problems in the long run. Over watering may make the golf course green, but it leaves it soft, lush, and susceptible to any number of turf maladies.
   Here at Fox Meadow we strive to use as little water as possible. Not only because it is the right thing to do environmentally, but because it leads to healthier turf in the long run. We use a practice called 'deep and infrequent watering' to encourage deep rooting, dry surfaces, less poa annua, and higher quality conditions. It basically is what it sounds like, we will water for about an hour the first night, then monitor the moisture levels and push them as long as we cal before watering again. This time frame can last anywhere from 4 days to 2 weeks depending on the time of year.

 Here is a shot from #7 green in June of last season. The deep watering forces the roots to chase the water deep in the soil profile.

 

     This is the tool we use to measure the moisture content in the greens. It is called the TDR 300.

  So as you can see, watering is not quite as simple as it seems. It is a complex procedure that depends on a lot of different factors to work out properly. The maintenance of the system along with the constant monitoring of the soil moisture is definitely one of the most important jobs we do here at Fox Meadow. So the next time you see Paul or Keith with their heads stuck in a hole, stop and say thanks, because without them things just would not be the same.

                Still one of the coolest sites on a golf course...the system working as it should

Range Behavior 2013 Edition

I stumbled across another great post by a superintendent friend of mine, Chris Tritabaugh, superintendent at the Hazeltine National Golf Club in Minnesota. It has to do with proper divot patterns  when hitting on the range. The pattern you choose has a dramatic effect on how well the divots heal. I borrowed a few of Chris's images to better illustrate the point.

 

As Superintendents, we would always prefer the patterns on the left and right.

This is the middle pattern growing in. It takes quite a bit longer to grow from seed, and usually leaves the surface of the tee uneven.

This is the strip pattern growing in. Notice you get the seed germination as well as the filling in of the existing turf from the sides. Much faster to heal and leaves a lot more of the tee in tact.

  Our range is quite busy and takes a pounding throughout the year. We spend a great deal of time tending it and making sure it's in the best possible condition for those who use it. As a golfer you can do a couple of things to help out :
1. Choose the proper divot pattern
2. If it is a simple bucket of balls for practice (no game to follow), choose the Fox Academy range. It will help spread the wear and give the Fox Meadow range more time to heal.

Thanks for reading
paul m

The Story Game

  Did you ever play that game when you were a kid where you sat in a circle, someone whispered something to the person seated next to them, and it continued around the room until the last person had to tell the story out loud again? Inevitably the story at the end was not the same as the story at the beginning, and everyone had a laugh.
  Such was my situation last Friday, when more than one frequent player at Fox Meadow stopped me to comment on the state of the greens. Earlier in the week I had mentioned to someone that the greens had wintered well and that they were as good as I have seen them coming out of the winter. Well that was the start of the story. By the weeks end I had spoke to a few season pass holders at the restaurant opening, all telling me that they had heard that the greens were "the best they have ever been."
 Well, this post is to let you know that while the greens did winter well, you still might notice some blemishes here and there. Some greens are quite good, while others, while still very good, may not look 100%. Here are a few photos to illustrate my point.

                                               

                                                     One of the really good ones, #11

                                           Some of the blemishes showing up on #8 green

                                                              A closer look on #12

                                    Extreme close up, notice the bentgrass coming through

  While it would be nice if every green was blemish free, it is not all together that problematic to see these spots. They are the result of dead poa annua plants. We have been on a poa eradication program for a couple of seasons now and it leaves the plants very weak going into the winter. Any amount of ice cover seems to really knock the stuffing out of the poa and leaves it struggling in the spring.
  There are lot's of new bentgrass shoots popping through the dead poa spots, and soon the bentgrass will fill the voids completely. By tipping the balance to more bentgrass, we will set ourselves up for better winter performance and higher quality greens throughout the season.

Thanks for reading
paul m

Interesting Link

I follow a lot of turf blogs. I read anywhere from 30-40 different one per week. They are a never ending source of information for all things turf, and are very helpful. Sometimes they are so good that I will en devour to pass them along to you.
 One I read today was particularly timely. It was a post by fellow superintendent Sean McCue, and he is in charge of the turf at The Country Club at Castle Pines, located in Colorado. He had a simple, yet informative post on something no one like to talk about, winter injury. He takes the time to explain the different types and their causes, and even though he may be located in Colorado...winter is coming...

 http://cccpgcm.blogspot.ca/2013/04/winter-injury-guide.html

thanks for reading
paul

Getting Closer

 Well things are definitely shaping up here at The Meadow. Most of the crew has been back for the last couple of weeks and things are progressing really well. Here are a few of the things that we have gotten to:
• the course clean up is complete
• the landscape clean up is 85% done (still some work to do behind 18 green)
• bunkers are cleaned and trimmed ( we will start placing sand soon)
• the lower parking lot at the shop was renovated
• the first of the greens were mowed
Here are a few pictures of the course...

 

This is one from the first tee   

 

From the middle of the 14th fairway

The big Academy green after the first mow

#11 green after the first mow

We will be mowing a bunch come this Friday. We plan to tackle the greens (mow/roll), the tees, approaches, and a few of the fairways. Next week we will continue with the tune up in preparation for opening day. The guys are working hard and definitely looking forward to seeing all of you.

Thanks for reading

paul

 

 

Back in the Saddle

Well it's that time of year again. Time to shake off the last vestiges of winter and start preparing for the season...but someone forgot to tell good ol' momma nature. We have already gotten 15+cm this week and now they are calling for 15+ more overnight tonight! Not that we had big on course plans this week, but it's still nice to see the white stuff disappearing.
 We had another fairly typical winter here on PEI. By typical I mean snow, then rain, then snow, then more rain, then freezing cold, then warm, then melting all snow, then cold, then snow...you get the idea. Ice formation on the greens has become the norm in recent years. It is something that we have to constantly monitor, and take action when necessary. By the end of January we had had solid ice cover on the putting surfaces for a little over a month. With bentgrass that is not such a bad thing (it lasts for 60-90 days), but for poa annua surfaces that is getting close to trouble(30+ days).
 So with a big mid winter thaw we decided to blow off the greens and melt things off. By then end of the melt everything was gone and we were ice free. That lasted a week. It snowed again, then rained, then got cold...well you know what happened. Good thing was the cycle was broken and the second round of ice was not a threat.
 So here are a few pictures from last week. Things are looking pretty good...

                                                                    That's # 4 green

                                           The lighter grass is poa, it did not like the ice

                                                               This is #10 green

                                                    Looking back up #10 fairway

                                                           Another shot of #4

 Some have you may be wondering, where are the tarps? Well short answer, they are in the maintenance building...long answer, we decided not to use them this season. The tarps have always been part of the winter preparation here at the Meadow, but they were never part of my philosophy. I was taught that for turf to be comfortable in it's own environment it needed to survive all that mother nature had to offer. It just makes it stronger. So think, new workout regime.
 The other main reason for forgoing the tarps was to avoid the big March flush of growth underneath the tarps. On the sunny days in March, the temperatures underneath the tarps can be 5-7 deg warmer than the air temps. That causes the greens that are exposed to break dormancy and begin to grow. It's simply to much growth way to early. We end up pulling off the tarps, mowing off an obscene amount of grass, and then proceed to watch the green go backwards as the temperatures get cold again.

                          That is # 4 back in 2011, I could not get two strips done before dumping
 
  There are a couple more reasons for not using the tarps, but suffice it to say you will not be seeing them around much in the future. (Despite the common misconception, they do not prevent ice damage...they are permeable so ice forms anyway) So gone will be that strange nuclear green color you see when you drive by #7 green in March. They will stay this beautiful dormant tan color until they decide to wake up and let you play again.

thanks for reading
paul m