#5 Approach Drainage

There's an old superintendent's adage that states that the three keys to good turf are drainage, drainage, and more drainage, so that's what we have been doing over the past few years.  Our latest project is a new line across the approach to number five green.  This is an area that holds puddles after rains, and tends to be very soft and wet even in dry periods.  We have installed 200 feet of new drainage lines that will hopefully help dry this area out and help get surface water off the fairway faster.  We should have this project completely wrapped up by the end of the day today.

When the bottom of your trench fills with water, you hit the right spot!

Backfilling the trench over the new pipe.

Fall Aerification Schedule

After a July that seemed like it was never going to end, August is flying by and it's time to start thinking about getting the golf course aerified so that it's ready and healthy for next season.  So here is the planned schedule for the fall aerification process.  Please take this into account when you are making plans for golf in September.

Tuesday, September 4 we will be aerifiying and topdressing the tees.  If all is going well, we will probably also be aerifying the collars around the greens.

September 17, 18, 19 the fairways will be aerified.  Most years we are able to finish this process on Monday (while we are closed) and Tuesday, but depending on weather and equipment issues, it is possible for it to take longer.  Please remember that the days that we are working during play, nine holes will be closed in order to expedite this time consuming process.

September 24 and 25 is when the greens will be aerified.  We will try our best to get all 18 holes done in one day while we are closed, but there is a chance that we will have hole closures on Tuesday the 25th to finish up the work.

We thank you for your patience while the course undergoes this process.  If there are any changes to the schedule due to weather or other circumstances, we will keep you updated through the blog.

13 Green Vandalized

Last night 13 green was vandalized.  The vandals used the bunker rakes and the flagstick to dig a few holes and punch some deep ballmark-like holes in the green.  We have already repaired most of the damage, but there may be some spots on the green that are bumpy. 

This green was already struggling, and this is one more thing that we didn't need to deal with.

Summer Stress Update.

Although the pressure of the drought and heat have been eased by a two inch rainfall on Wednesday night into Thursday morning and lower temperatures today, this summer's weather has definitely begun to take its toll on the golf course, and  I would expect that we will be back to watering very quickly, as the recent rain only put a small dent in 2012's moisture deficit.

On the course, not all of the problems of 2012 are visible on the surface, but some are.  Twelve and thirteen fairways have had some problems with dry spots, and combining the dry areas with 100 degree heat have resulted in some small areas that have died out.  Many of these spots were a grass called rough bluegrass that is very susceptible to heat stress.  Rough bluegrass is tough to kill completely though, and most of the time when the weather cools off, it will come back.  On the greens, the heat is really stressing the Poa Annua and it took on a very pronounced yellow color in many areas this week.  Without cool nights to cool off the soil and the plant, there has been no chance of recovery from the stress of the day which just compounds the stress.  Today's weather is going to go a long way towards taking some of that pressure off the turf.

Below the surface, our roots that were down deep until recently, have been creeping up closer to the surface.  With shallower roots on the greens, you will most likely see softer greens from here on out.  Without the deeper roots to get the water down in the soil, we will need to keep the soil near the surface wetter in order to provide the shallow roots with the water they need to keep the plants alive and healthy.

Now, along with the stress from the heat we are seeing some Anthracnose disease developing on 13 and 17 greens, with 13 being the most noticeable.  The disease is the bronze colored spots that are concentrated in the right center of the green.  Anthracnose typically only effects Poa Annua plants, and on 13 you can see where poa and bentgrass are mixed, the bentgrass is unaffected.  Anthracnose can be difficult to control once it has begun, so we apply preventative fungicides beginning early in the season to ensure that it doesn't develop.  Dr. Derek Settle, the turf pathologist from the CDGA, came out yesterday and confirmed my diagnosis of the disease.  He also believes that we may be dealing with a strain of the disease that is resistant to a certain group of fungicides, which would explain how it broke through our preventative treatments.  Samples of the greens were taken, so that more testing could be done to determine if this is what we are dealing with.  The greens have already been treated with a fungicide without resistance problems, so hopefully the disease is now stopped and will not spread to much more area.  When I find out the results of the testing I will post it up on the blog.

Rain!

It's been a long time since we've seen a cup full of water.  Taken Saturday, June 30.  #6 Green

Mother nature seems to have changed her mind very quickly, and because of that, our mindset is changing very quickly.  Typical for the Chicago area, if you don't like the weather, wait an hour.  Seeing as how we've been so focused on managing the drought conditions this year, you would think that we would be able to relax some with the rains that we have been seeing the past few days.  Unfortunately, this is only partially true.  While we may not have to worry about dragging hoses around, we now have to worry about disease pressures that we have not really had to face much this year.  Superintendents are rarely happy with the weather.

Rains on Friday morning brought us 1.3" of welcome rain, and a storm with heavy rain rolled through just a few minutes before I started writing this, my guess is that we have received about another half inch of rain.  Now with the forecast showing sustained heat and humidity for the at least the next week we will be shifting our scouting of the course from dry spots to pythium disease scouting.  Pythium Blight is potentially the most devastating disease that we see in this area, as it can kill large areas of turf within hours if it is not controlled quickly.  It is carried by water and is usually seen in wet, low areas and can only survive nights with high humidity and low temperatures above 70 degrees, exactly what we will be seeing for the coming week.  All of our bentgrass areas (tees, greens, and fairways) have had preventative treatments applied, but it is still possible to see breakthroughs so we will have to stay on our toes to make sure that any pythium that pops up is treated curatively and not allowed to spread.

So, although our mindset has changed for now, this summer still continues to be a challenge, and it will be a long time before we are in the clear.

Ouch

This morning we had a massive hydraulic oil leak on one of the fairway mowers on the 15th fairway.

This is about as bad as it gets for this type of situation.  It was just about the longest pass the operator made on this fairway and it started at the beginning of his pass.  The leak was behind him, so there was no chance for him to know what was happening until he turned to make is next pass.  When he turned and saw it, he did the right thing and drove through the rough directly to a cart path and stopped the machine.

Unfortunately, the damage was already done as this grass has essentially zero chance of survival.  Tomorrow we will be resodding this area with sod from another fairway, probably the small fairway on 16 short of the creek, and that area will be reseeded.  Another fairway needs to be used so that the turf we bring in will closely match the turf on the rest of the fairway.  The sod lines will be visible, but we would like to make the transition as disguised as possible especially since it's directly across the middle of the fairway.

Fairway Dry Spots

In a "typical" year, we apply chemicals called wetting agents to the fairways, tees, and greens to prevent a condition called localized dry spots (LDS).  With this year not being very typical, and due to some sprayer malfunctions we were unable to apply the wetting agents to the fairways before the condition developed.  Once the LDS sets in, it can be very difficult to get the soil wet again.  Our hope was that the rain we received last week would help alleviate the problems but it didn't.

This picture of the morning dew shows the polka dotted pattern that the dry spots have made on #1 Fairway.  The dots that you see are areas where dew was unable to form because of the dry soil, an evenly moist soil will have consistent dew on the grass.  (It also shows part of our cure for the problem.)

It's a little difficult to see in the picture, but if you look closely at these two plugs taken just inches apart from each other, you can see that the plug on the left is bone dry and just crumbles when it comes out of the ground, and the plug on the right is evenly moist and holds together.  The one on the right is how it should look.

So far these areas have not wilted or died, but if we don't do anything to get the soil to accept water before the summer heats up we could be looking at fairways that are dotted with brown spots.  This week you will notice that we are aerifying selected fairway areas with solid tines, these are the areas that have LDS, and the holes are the first step to fixing the problem.  Next, we will spray a wetting agent that is specifically for curing dry spots over the holes and then the areas will be watered heavily.  This process will get the dry spots to take water and allow our preventative wetting agent applications to to their job.