The Experience at Farmlinks

The following post was written by our assistant superintendent, Adam Lencke.  Last week, he was given the opportunity to travel to a research golf course called Farmlinks in Alabama.  It's a great opportunity, and this was his experience.  Enjoy!

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Last week I received the opportunity to visit the FarmLinks resort at Pursell Farms in Sylacauga, Alabama.  A select number of superintendents and assistants from the Chicagoland area were invited by BASF The Chemical Company through salesmen around the area to attend this 3 day trip for research, demonstration, and a little bit of fun.

11/30: Our first event was an education portion on pesticides manufactured by BASF.  We saw about 5 comparisons of fungicide programs and their efficacy during the summer on bentgrass greens.  These programs are rated by several factors including turf density, color, disease activity, stress, and overall plant health.  There were actually 20 overall programs in the study.  We finished with a Q and A session with reps from our local BASF distributor.

Frost!

12/1:  We woke up to a frigid morning, and yes, they also have frost in Alabama.  It was a chilly 31 degrees Thursday morning.  The highs did reach in the upper 50’s, lower 60’s.

We started off inside with more presentations on products used around FarmLinks. We covered the GPS system they use for tracking golf carts, Visage Mobile Golf Information.  This program allows the managers to zone off any location on the course to keep carts from getting too close to greens, tees, wet areas, naturalized areas, or anywhere that is potentially unsafe.  It also has an interactive screen on all the carts.  If you ask me sometime I’d love to share more about what this program can do.

After more machine demonstrations we finally got to go outside for a brief talk about their program before we would go to lunch and get to have some fun on our own.

Here is Mark Langner, FarmLinks superintendent discussing with us the daily stresses and current activities on the course.  These greens are cool season grass, just like at Calumet, except they are pure creeping bentgrass.  Ours have some poa annua mixed in.  At FarmLinks they go to extremes to keep poa out by plucking and cutting out any poa annua that seeds itself on the greens.  As you can tell in this picture they just aerified the greens a couple weeks earlier.

We also discussed how much heat Alabama can endure in a season and how they manage over time. Speaking of weather effects, how about this pic!

This is a view of their practice range which is entirely bermudagrass, a warm season species. Everything but the greens have gone dormant for the year because of the low temps, especially those overnight lows of 31!  The actual tee box in this picture is green because they overseeded all tee boxes and fairways with a perennial ryegrass variety.  Perennial ryegrass is known for its ability to germinate in 3-5 days and grow quickly. It is a risky species in the summer however because it is extremely susceptible to just about every disease in the book. 

After the on course tour we broke for lunch and had the opportunity to play golf.  The following are pics from the course.  Note the dramatics of dormancy in the rough compared to the overseeded fairways.

The Par 3 17th.  The lodge behind the green is where we stayed.

The Par 3 5th.  The tee box is 170 feet above the green, and provides beautiful views of Alabama.

Par 3 8th hole.  Farmlinks has amazing par 3's.

FarmLinks was a great experience.  It is a public facility so if you have time and you’re in Alabama, I highly recommend adding it to your “courses to play” list. 

Adam Lencke

Assistant Superintendent

Twitter Added to the Blog!

I have started a twtter account, and have added it to the blog.  For those of you who use twitter, you can follow the link to follow me, and if you don't have a twitter account, my last five "tweets" will show up on the right side of the blog.  Using twitter will be a great way to send out short little notes about what we are seeing on the golf course and to quickly provide up to date information about course conditions.  If for some reason the link to follow me isn't working, my twitter handle is @CCCSupt 

Final Cut

Over the last week or so, we have been making our final preparations for winter.  Beginning last Friday we gave all the bentgrass areas their final mowing of the season.  Surprisingly we still cut a fair amount of grass in some areas of the fairways, but on greens and tees there wasn't many clippings.  I take this as a sign that the grass has finally gone into dormancy and we can stop mowing and begin our last tasks in getting the course ready for winter.

On Tuesday we took advantage of the warm weather and applied dormant fertilizer to the greens and the tees, and then watered it into the soil .  Dormant fertilizer helps the turf to stay strong through the winter and helps it to green up quickly in the spring.  Wednesday we began applying preventative snow mold fungicide on the fairways, and we will complete the greens and tees today. 

Tomorrow, we will be blowing all the water out of the irrigation system, so if you are out on the course don't be alarmed by sprinklers popping on and off. 

It's November Already?

Wow, I'm looking back at my last post and realizing that it's been a month since I've posted up any new content.  October seems to have just flown by, and I apologize for not keeping the blog up to date recently. 

In the last month, the course has taken on it's fall look.  About half the trees have lost their leaves now, but we still have a long way to go with leaf cleanup as the silver maple trees make up about 30 percent of our tree population, and they have barely begun to shed their leaves.  As you can imagine, leaf cleanup is our main task in the fall, and it continues until Thanksgiving, some years it carries into the first week of December.  Other changes that occur to the course during the fall is the 'Washington' creeping bentgrass that is present on on most of our greens turns purple, it is most noticeable on the 18th green.  This is a physiological reaction to the colder temperatures, and has no impact on the health of the plant. 

A few weeks from now, we will be giving the golf course it's final preparations for winter.  On November 18th, we will be blowing irrigation system out, and during that same week we will be spraying preventative fungicides for snow mold disease and applying dormant fertilizer to the greens and tees.  The final step in winterizing the turf will be a heavy application of topdressing sand on the greens around Thanksgiving.  This heavy topdressing helps to protect the plant from the cold dry winds we can get here, and it has also helps the turf green up quicker in the spring. 

Although we are nearing the end of the golf season, we are still working on some projects.  The main project that we have been working on this fall is reducing the collar widths to a uniform size of 48 inches.  Those of you have been out to play this fall have probably noticed the areas of collar that are being mowed down to greens height.  We are a little over half way in the slow process of reducing the height of cut now, and there has been very little area that has been damaged.  Over the past few weeks we have been working on "Phase 2" of this project which is making some areas of collar into rough, and reducing the collar size from the outside. 

This past weekend, I got a chance to get away from the area and visit my alma mater, Penn State for a football game.  When I planned this trip in June, I was definitely not expecting the weather conditions to be what they were.  Hopefully we don't see anything like this for another month or so.

I know it's 80 degrees now, but....

Accuweather is forecasting a nasty winter for the Chicago area.  It's calling for colder than average temperatures and above average snowfall.  So if this does come true, just remember that snow cover protects the turf from the cold and dry winds.  As long as we don't get any snow mold disease, which we treat the turf for in late fall, the turf should be stronger in the spring. 

Enough about that, lets enjoy this weather we are having for the next week!

Today's greens aerification and topdressing went very well so we will have all 18 holes open for play tomorrow morning.  The grounds staff worked very hard to make sure that we got it all done in one day for the members to be able to enjoy the golf course during this great weather coming up this week.  Most of the work is totally complete, there are just a few greens that need a little more sand to fill the holes and some minor cleanup work that can all be done during play.  If you come out and play tomorrow, I believe that you will be as happy with the final result as I am.  The greens are rolling suprisingly smooth and they still have good speed.

Here is today's process in pictures

Jesus coring the green using 3/8" coring tines.

Alfredo and Paul using the core harvester to pick up the plugs.

Adam applies and sand which is left to dry.

Dave uses the brush to drag as much sand into the holes as possible.

Blowers are used to move the sand around and help fill in the holes.

The green is rolled to give us the final product.

The final product.

As you can see, all this works ends up with a nice final product.  We know that this is a disruptive process, especially when the weather is nice and the greens are rolling well, so we do everything in our power to minimize the disruption and still have the process be effective in benefiting the greens.

Weather and Greens Aerification

It's been a rainy week here as evidenced by our postponed greens aerification.  Leading up to today, we have had rain on six of the last seven days, and if you go back a little farther, seven out of the last twelve.  Add it all up and we've had 2.3 inches of rain in the last week and 2.7 inches in the last twelve days.  All this rain and dampness leads to a very soft and wet golf course, especially this time of year.  As the days get shorter, the sun gets less intense, and temperatures are lower the course takes much longer to dry than it does in the summer.  Two and a half inches of rain over the course of two weeks in July would probably be a welcome reprieve from having to irrigate the golf course, but now it just leads to a wet course.  The course seems to be starting to soak up the water now, but there are still some very wet and soft areas.  The course should be able to dry out over the next week as the forecast is calling for sun and higher temperatures for the next week or so.

Monday's forecast for sun and 70 degrees is holding strong, and that has us excited to get the greens aerified.  That is the ideal weather for aerifying anything on the course.  The plugs should come out of the ground nicely and be easy to pick up, and the sand topdressing that we put down to fill the holes will dry quickly and be easy to spread around.  Also, the warmer temperatures that are called for next week will get the greens growing again, and the holes should fill in quickly.  The plan for aerifying the greens remains the same as it was on our first attempt.  We will try to get all of the work completed on Monday, October 3, but some of the topdressing work may have to carry over into Tuesday.  Work that continues into Tuesday may cause the back nine to be closed for part of the day.  As always, I will post updates of the process on the blog and keep the pro shop informed of our progress.