Wednesday, October 30

Budget Season

As fall moves into winter, I am always in the preliminary stages of putting together my budget and purchasing plan for the next year.  I was browsing through the USGA Green Section again and found an article from 1922 that explains how to maintain an acceptable course condition for around $1500 a year.  It references courses from Ohio and Michigan including Inverness which made it especially interesting.  Also, I had a pretty good laugh how times have changed.  At least you don't make me provide my own horse.

Click Here for Article


Monday, October 21

Hint hint...

Below is a link to this months USGA Green Section Record.  I have gotten away from posting these because of late they have been more for people like me (turf geeks) and less for people like you (normal clear thinking people/golfers).  This months installation did have some interesting articles on maintenance facilities, equipment, and bunkers.

With equipment capital spending season upon us, I thought a few of you may be surprised at the amount of equipment we stuff our building with just to keep this place going.  If you've ever wondered why we spend at least a little capital each year to maintain our fleet, this should give you a little insight.  Also in the Golf Course Maintenance Equipment 101 article, the picture of the "substandard" maintenance facility bears a striking resemblance to the building behind #8 green, where my office is.........

Click Here for USGA Green Section Record

Monday, October 14

Fall Round-up

As I seem to do on every post this year, I must begin by apologizing for the fact that I haven't blogged in some time.  We have been very busy of late, and we are currently running on a skeleton crew.  Turns out there may actually be some economic recovery in our area as my seasonal workers seem to be finding better full-time work.  What nerve!

Staffing woes aside, we have been accomplishing a great deal the past few weeks.  Greens have been aerified, topdressed, fertilized, and de-thatched.  We used the same "coreless" technique as the past few years with great success.  Greens are recovering more rapidly than I can ever recall with our fall punch. I hope to have the greens back to speedy and smooth with another week of good recovery weather.  I hate to boor you with the same pics of punching every time, but I get so many questions from members about aerification I will share for their sake.  Below are a few snapshots of our process.

We start with an aggressive verti-cutting of the greens which serves to de-thatch and open up the canopy to receive sand.

The grooves from verti-cutting.


Add Sand - lots of sand

This year we punched it in with 3/4" solid tines.


A good rotary brushing and a little handwork later and we are done.  Lots of rolling to follow.

Aside from the greens, we have also deep-tine aerified tees and fairways over the past two weeks.  We will begin verticutting this week and hope to be done soon.  Unlike the greens, fairways and tees will be a little different this fall.  Normally, we have a very aggressive, wide-tooth verticutter head that rips large channels of thatch creating large grooves and a terrible mess.  Due to excessive worm activity (yes you heard me - worm activity), we will be unable to perform that this fall and will wait until spring.  We will do a light de-thatching similar to the greens, but will wait for better conditions before ripping fairways and tees stem to stern.

Worm castings are the classic "double-edged sword".  On occasion we have levels that cause some pretty serious disruption in fairway and tee conditions.  If you have noticed 18 fairway, 4 fairway, and isolated areas on just about all others, you've seen small, muddy mounds of soil that seem to be smearing into the turf creating a muddy appearance.  These are deposited by worms and made worse by the heavy rains of a couple of weeks ago.  While they may cause some temporary playability issues in areas, they are in-fact a form of fertilizer.  Also, the worm activity acts to do some of the soil aerification for us by creating small channels and depositing fertilizer.  In past years with bad earthworm problems, the most affected fairways always green up sooner in spring.  Look at #18 fairway around march.  Despite the fact that it faces north, it will green up quicker than the rest.

Worm castings.

A closeup of a fresh worm casting before it gets squished

And lately, if the worms aren't getting us, the raccoons are.  With 2013 being a bad year for grubs in our area, the raccoons are out trying to dig them up.  While not as bad as past years, the activity seems to be starting a little earlier this year.  Offenders will be "relocated" as the fall progresses.


A raccoon buffet in front of 12 tee.

And finally, now that I've likely bored you to death, a reminder about our bunkers.  Our bunkers have not been rebuilt in almost 90 years.  While this is not news, it is important to remember that as a result of not rebuilding them, the edges are built almost entirely on old bunker sand from decades of sand splashing up onto the grass banks.  It is important to remember never climb out of a trap on the green side as the edges are not stable.  Over the last few weeks our edges have been badly damaged by people stepping on the steep edges and caving them in.  While I hope to have bunkers rebuilt in the not-too-distant future, it will be important to avoid walking on the edges in order to keep them as nice as possible and keep you from busting your ankle.

Now bring on the leaves!



#11 greenside trap after a busy saturday.

The sandy edges on the steep side present a danger to players.  Always enter AND exit your traps on the low side.