May

As we enter May the golf course continues to improve on a daily basis. It has been relatively cold and dry the last few weeks. The 1" of rain we received last week has been sucked up quickly by the golf course. We are still mowing the course about once a week. Greens have been slow to heal due to the nightly frosts and also the use of growth regulators to suppress poa seedhead production. I'm fairly confident with warmer temperatures this place is going to explode growth wise.
We spent much of last week putting out our spring fertilizers. We seeded a number of thin areas on the course. We continued with spraying any weed populations that spring up.
This week we started working on a small drainage project in the 8th fairway. We have also started aerifying tees, completing the back nine today. Its been a terrific spring so far for us. Not a ton of growth yet, dry weather, and the ability to get a number of things accomplished on the course before things really take off.

Dr. Frank Rossi

Here is a blog post from Turfnet, written by Dr. Frank Rossi out of Cornell University on spring greens. This pretty much absolutely has us pegged at where we are with our greens this time of year.

 

Be True

Published April 25, 2012

Not only has the season progressed rapidly in the Northern climate but the golfer expectations are ramped up as well. Often the pressure for peak performance is the greatest around US Open time. Now it seems with the weather a month ahead, the pressure is also ahead of schedule. DON’T GIVE IN TO IT. Be True.

When I’m talking about pressure to peak it is code for fast greens. You start pushing the greens now you are going to pay later. Do not push for speed now when you are pounding them with PGR’s for seedhead suppression, drying them down for conditioning, when they are barely growing. Be true.
Convince your golfers the greens need to be TRUE at this time of year not necessarily fast. Spring greens can often be bumpy from seedheads, differential growth, PGR use, dryspots, etc. Keep up your topdressing (dusting) and maintain a reasonable height. Do some grooming to pull the seedheads out that make the green roll inconsistent. And lest I forget, ROLL ROLL ROLL.

When the conversation about speed comes up with your golfers turn it to trueness of roll that is less stressful to achieve. When the pressure starts to rise early remind them that preparing for the Masters or US Open requires planning and working back from when you want the greens to peak, like in June and July. Peaking now often means pain later. The truth is a bitch

Spring update

Hard to believe that we have already been open for a month. Usually at this time we have only been open for a few days. After some much needed rain the course has greened up some. Soil temps are still extremely low and while we have had an early extended spring I don't think grass growth wise we are that far ahead. The rough is starting to need mowing and we usually begin that in earnest on May 1st. We are still only mowing the fairways and tees about once a week and greens are being cut two or three times a week. We have applied our ammonium sulfate fertilizer to the greens. Tomorrow we are fertilizing fairways with a granular and I hope we get a few more rain showers to wash it all in. We have also spent time this week seeding much of the flood damaged areas from last fall. Weeds are being treated throughout the course as needed. All of the things we do in the spring sets us up for what kind of conditions we will have in the summer.

Over the next few weeks we will be looking to aerify tees and at least the front nine fairways. Its been awhile since we have done any cultivation to our fairways, so if the weather cooperates we should at least get a chunk of this done during May. If anyone has any questions feel free to shoot me an email. Jstackwcc@netzero.net.
Jeremy Stachowicz
Course Superintendent
Wahconah Country Club

Deep Tine cont.

We finished up the deep tine yesterday with only one minor mishap. I hit a large rock in the back of the 11th green which then sliced open the irrigation line. We repaired the line, but we will have to give the back of the green some more repair work. Today we applied some topdress sand to the greens. My intent is not to fill the holes but just get some sand into them to smooth out the putting. Tomorrow we are going to try and verticut the greens, hoping to chop the sand into the surface as well as close the holes in some.
Jeremy Stachowicz
Course Superintendent
Wahconah Country Club

Deep Tine

Here is a pic of us conducting some Spring Deep Tine aerification. We are using .5" solid (no cores) tines set at 4" spacing. We are penetrating roughly 8" into the green profile. I have started to observe a layering at about a 4" depth where our standard aerification stops. Due to budget constraints we haven't done a deep tine in about 4 seasons. Thank you to Berkshire Hills CC for letting us borrow their machine for this purpose. We will also be doing some verti cutting and topdressing this spring. We won't be doing any additional core cultivation this spring. So the greens will remain very playable.

Augusta in the summer

Here is a pic of Augusta National during the middle of summer. The 9th green is in the middle of the pic, with the18th right next to it under a shade tent. Doesn't look so good does it?

Week of April 9th

Last week we got most of what I wanted accomplished done. The course was mown again. We also reestablished the intermediate rough that was missing last year. I had to reorganize our staff in order to make sure we had enough people to get this done. Hopefully all of you who missed it, will enjoy seeing it return. We also have the course all marked with the hazard stakes and now out of bounds. We also spent the week prepping the irrigation system. This is a long process. Today we started to fill the lines . This will take us a few days of filling and looking for leaks etc. If we encounter any we will fix them and move on to filling another section. I'm not really in any hurry to water anything, but it will be nice to know that the system is available and running as well as a 20 year old system can. We have also started applying our Spring products. So you will see us out spraying  and or fertilizing over the next few weeks. We have also started working on the drinking water which we hope to have available in a few days. We do have some breaks in the lines that we are attending to first. We have also begun loaming and seeding the river bank work.

Starting the week of April 16th we will be Deep Tine Aerifying greens. This will lead to some disruption. Ill be passing along more information on this.

Spring Work Continues

Last week we spent all of our time in the bunkers. We went through all of them (56) making sure the shape was correct and that we had proper sand distribution throughout. We added sand to about 8 bunkers. We have some edging and weeding to do throughout the season, but as of right now the bunkers are very playable. We had some much needed rain this morning and the turf is starting to green up even more. We spent this morning putting our covers away and organizing our storage area. Out on the course we are cutting up and removing the white pine damage along the right of #8 from the winter. We are also focusing on more areas that need hand raking and debris pick up. We are also starting to work on seeding the river banks to help control any future erosion issues. Other areas of work this week will be to get course supplies fully out, irrigation start-up and to mow the entire course again. I have been enjoying the early start to the season as we are getting a lot done on the course, yet we aren't fully into mowing mode yet.