Aerifying Schedule

Last week we aerified greens, and it went about as smooth as it ever has. The weather was absolutely perfect and at a week out the greens are healing nicely. My previous post gives a pictorial of the process from start to finish, for those of you who might be interested in what it takes to go from really nice putting surfaces to something akin to putting over large holed pegboard. By this coming weekend they should be in pretty good shape.

This week we will be aerifying tees, which we started today by getting half of the driving range tee done. Wednesday and Thursday we plan to do the front 9 and back 9 respectively. And then on Friday we plan to finish the driving range tee. The process is a bit different then greens. We pull cores, pulverize them, and then drag the sand/soil into the turf canopy. The par 3 tees and some of the par 4 tees will get some seed and topdressing as part of the process also. Like the greens, we will be mowing the tees a little less frequently over the next week or so, and also waiting a little longer in the day so they have time to dry a bit and we don't track around any mud.

Fairways will follow next week and it usually takes a couple of weeks to get them all done. We use large solid tines and the disruption to play is minimal. They will also get some seed and topdressing dragged in where we feel it is needed, though they have recovered very nicely from the summer issues we had a couple of months ago.

10 Steps or so...

Pulling Cores

Harvesting Cores

Spreading Sand

Dragging Sand In

Brushing Sand In

Hand Broom And Fill Remaining Holes

Backpack Blower Cleanup

Mowing

Fertilizing

Much Needed Irrigation By Step 10

Hole #16, What's Going On.

05-10-2011

05-10-2011

05-11-2011

05-16-2011

05-17-2011

Here are shots to summarize the work so far of the bunker renovation taking place on hole 16. It is expected to be completed by the end of the day today and sod should go down tomorrow sometime. In about 2 weeks we should be able to open up the new bunkers and surrounding rough providing the weather cooperated and the new turf roots down good. 

And on another note, #16 green will be open for play starting Monday the 23rd. We have kept the height of cut a little longer compared to the other greens to encourage better growth, especially once it starts getting traffic, and overall it is in great shape. There are still some thin spots but the bulk of the damage down the center of the green has recovered very nicely. Once the younger plants have matured a bit more we will start a topdressing program, same goes for #7 green, which should help with the thinner and uneven spots...

If this weather can start to stay more typical for this time of year we should have the turf back in no time.

A Little Damage, A Little Disease

( 2010_07_29 - #17 Green Showing Damage/Disease )

The heat and humidity have began to take its toll in a few places. Our main issues have been with the fairways, though they have been minor and have even started to show signs of healing. Our teeing surfaces are not so much disease ridden as they are divot ridden. We struggle with some of them because of the size, that being too small for many of them, the par 3 tees on #4 and #16 being the worst. We do topdress and seed throughout the season to try and keep as much turf on them as we can, and not just by filling divots but using the topdresser and broadcasting seed. For the most part the other tees are in good shape and are not much of a issue.

The greens on the course have been in super shape for most of the season. Until recently we have had little to no issues with the turf, and that includes the notorious spots on #8 and #16. But a couple weeks ago we started to see some disease pop up on a few of them. Anthracnose being the main problem, and this is nothing new since it has occurred almost every year that I have been at IVGC. We are on a preventative chemical program for our greens, which means we are spraying fungicides on about a 14 day interval for most of the summer. Even with that schedule we can still get disease, it just shows you how tenacious some of the turf pathogens can be. There are also other factors that make the turf more susceptible, other then temps and humidity: low mowing, lean fertilizer program, and irrigation/drainage problems are a few. And on top of the disease issues we also had some mechanical damage caused by our riding greens mower and turf groomers. The height of cut was too low for the tri-plex to provide a good quality cut and the turf groomers were down, this tufted up some of the softer/spongy areas on our greens and scalped them out a little.

So what are we doing about it? We continue to stay on a regular topdressing program, a light layer of sand every 14 days on our greens. I have bumped up the fertilizer rate a small amount to give the turf a little extra growing power. We have raised the height of cut back to our normal 0.125" and added a extra rolling or two during the week. And we are looking into a verticutting program along with the topdressings which should aid in firming up those softer spots more so then just the topdressing.

The Ropes Are Down

( 2010_05_12 - Hole #13 from the white tees )

Hole 13 has officially opened for play. For the most part the fairway turf is in great shape and has filled in very nicely this spring. There are still a few thin spots but once the temps really start to warm up they should fill in quickly. Until further notice, it is cart path only for the hole with no exceptions. At least for the next couple of weeks we will be following that policy, and then re-evaluate.

( 2010_05_12 - Hole 13 from the red tees)

Please obey the signage and keep the cart traffic off the grass. Also, don't forget to grab a seed bottle when you grab your club to go take your next shot. We will continue to do some seeding and topdressing in the thinner spots, but with some warm weather the turf will really start to fill in on its own.

Spring is here, and with it...

On Monday we aerified all the greens with knife style tines. The tines are about 3/4" wide and a good 1/4" thick, they go about 3-4" deep. This has been the normal practice for the last couple of years in the spring. It is a low impact type of aerifying and just creates air chambers without pulling out the soil/organic matter. Our greens have a pretty good rootzone mix of sand/soil from years of topdressing, and the organic matter is not too built up. This allows us to not take cores twice a year, but rather use something that is less obstructive to the playing surface. However, if I thought coring was waranted for the spring aerifying I would not hesitate to do it.

On the same note, we did core aerify the collars of all 18 greens on Tuesday. The timing could not have been better with the 1/2" of rain we received almost immediately after finishing the last green. We aerified, picked up the cores, topdressed with a sand/soil/peat mix, seeded with bentgrass, and dragged it all in. The rain was perfect for soaking the seed and "melting" the topdressing into the turf. We may also do this routine on some of the worst areas in the rough that just don't seem to want to fill in. For the few burned out fairway spots (#10 comes to mind) we will be slit seeding and topdressing those sometime this week.