It's Been a While!

I didn't realize until this week that my last update was during the Rock at the end of September. It's been a busy few months for me both on and off the course so posting to the blog had been neglected. My goal is over the next few months to get back to updating regularly to catch up on what we've been up to and what is planned for 2015. 

The first snow of 2014

The course has been put to bed for the winter. The irrigation system was blown out before Thanksgiving and we are currently working on the snow mold applications to protect the fine turf over the winter. Over the last few weeks we have been working on bringing in the course furniture, mowing brush and fescues and most importantly decorating for the holiday season. Over the next few months we have a number of trees marked to be taken down when the weather permits and along with that we will be working on inside projects around the shop getting the behind the scenes items taken care of. 

For this post I figured I would touch on some of the stuff beyond the maintenance of the course that we've been up to since the Rock. The first big fall event outside course maintenance was preparing for the Haute Hoedown and we were asked to turn the cart barn into a barn! It took a bit of planning and a lot of cooperation with the golf staff but we were able to turn our nice modern shed into something that resembled a western setting fit for the event. 

A panoramic shot of the Haute Ho Down

Seemingly the jail cell saw a lot of action!

And I also now know the price on my head when I topdress!

The next event is one that we look forward to every year and one where all the staff throughout the club help out to make it happen. The Monday after Thanksgiving is holiday decoration day and the maintenance staff are called in to help create the decoration theme for the year. 

This year the tree is the centerpiece and the vision was to create 'lighted curtains' to enhance it and draw your eye in. This took quite a bit of work as we had to construct a box to contain the lights so they could fall from the ceiling. Thankfully the project went well and without any hiccups! Thank you to Mrs. Beth Carson for inspiring our vision this year.  

The scaffolding is up to get started

The dining room from above - we also the opportunity to change the light bulbs

Building the lighting structure

The first test - thankfully it worked!

Painting the trim

The lights before being tied back

It turned out great!

  

 We also resurrected our old Poinsettia tree for the lobby

So that is a little glimpse of what the staff do to decorate for the holidays. Once maintenance had our part done, the clubhouse staff along with Deb the club's horticulturist/florist/decorator did a fantastic job with decorating the buildings. 

So for now I'll leave with a picture of the course from the fall to remind us all what awaits come the spring!  Enjoy the holiday season!  

The Rock 2014

It is hard to believe it is already time for the Rock - LedgeRock's big member guest tournament. The weather this year is just about perfect, with cool mornings and high skys and temperatures in the the low to mid 70s all week. I can't argue with the weather but it has been extremely dry for most of the last month; thankfully the temperatures are not crazy so the turf is holding up well.

I've been slow in updating the blog since aeration as we have been busy making sure the course is ready for The Rock. Mother Nature really taken care of the course this year with a nicely timed rain after aeration so the course healed quickly - even considering the amount of work that was done to it. Within two weeks of starting, the holes were fully healed and the height of cut was being lowered back to normal. Within three weeks they were fully back to normal. Which brought us to last week. Although the greens looked perfect, they needed another light topdressing so the height of cut could be lowered further; therefore making sure that they would be perfect for the Rock and the remainder of the season. This had to be squeezed in around some damp days and a number of outings. This delayed us a week in getting them up to speed, but it is worth it as the greens now are perfect!

Light topdressing on 8

The topdressing was gone almost immediately; the sand smoothed all the remaining imperfections and the greens were rolling smoother and faster with  a day

You may have noticed that the fairways have been striped since aeration, rather than 'block' or 'half and half' cut. This was to make the most of the verticutting after aeration and to help comb some of the grain out of the fairways and tees. Since it takes about a third longer to mow fairways we will be switching back to the half and half look soon. I'll cover the reasons for this in another post.

No mater how well you prepare, there are times when something happens that frustrates. The picture below is a prime example. One of the greens mowers picked up a twig and scraped across 1 green. Thankfully the operator noticed it after one pass but the damage was done. We repaired what we could with a ball mark repair tool and the rest was spread out using a cup cutter which makes the damage smaller so it heals quicker. It will fill in over time and although it looks bad, thankfully it doesn't effect ball roll.

Cody repairing the scratch on 1 green

Other than that, the maintenance team have been busy with regular maintenance and ensuring the course is ready for the rest of the season. Most of the outing and tournaments during the year have late morning/early afternoon shotguns but the Rock is an early morning shotgun. This means that the crew have to perform their tasks in the dark which can be a challenge, but nothing out of the ordinary for events from early tee times to Tour championships. To give you an idea of what is involved, the following is a timeline of a Superintendents tournament morning.

2:45am Alarm goes off

2:50 Wife yells that alarm is going off! 

2:50:09 Out of bed

3:16 ready to hit the road

3:22 Dunkin Donuts to pick up 'crew fuel' - You would be amazed at how busy a DD is at 3:30am

3:32 Arrive at work

3:35 The barn is open and the equipment is started to be set up for when the crew arrive

3:40 leave the barn to bring out spot lights

3:41 Return to barn - forgot generator......

3:59 The first spotlights are on 

4:19 The second set are on, along with the Clubhouse, Parking Lot and Locker Room lights to provide as much light as possible in that area.

4:15 The greens mowers are loaded and ready to go

4:26 The rest of the equipment is ready to go

4:33 The third spot light is on 3 green

4:47 The crew start to arrive

4:51 The light tower is placed and turned on behind 1 green and it conveniently lights up 2 green also

4:52 The Gator dies as the battery is drained from using all it's spot lights at once.....

4:56 The Gator is running again

5:00 The crew head out to the course

5:17 Number 16 approach has been cut, the bunkers are being raked and the green is being cut

5:22 Over half of 1 green is cut

5:51 The first sign of the dawn

5:55 The guys are well into their second greens and dawn is arriving quickly

6:13 The lights are off and it is bright enough to see, from here on it is easy!

6:25 It is officially daytime!

6:36 The roller operator is really happy the sun is up by the time he gets to 2 as he can see a lot easier.

7:29 The mist has burned off and it is the beginning of a beautiful day

8:26 The crew are finishing up on 15 and only have #17 and 18 fairway to finish

8:52 The crew finish up the bunkers on 18 and head back to the barn

9:00 The tournament starts

9:02 Breakfast!

9:45 Staff safety meeting

10:30 The maintenance staff have gone for the day. 

Luckily everything is completed in the morning so there is no need for the crew to return in the afternoon. 

So that is a glimpse of what happens behind the scenes of a tournament.

Lastly a big thank you the maintenance team. Thanks to their dedication everything went to plan and ran smoothly so we were done on time. Their hard work makes this job look easy!

As always email me with any questions or comments: alan@ledgerockgolf.com

Fall Aeration 2014

Usually when I'm scheduled to perform cultural practices on the greens a couple of members joke with me about it. Generally the banter goes along the lines of "the course/greens are perfect right now so it must be time for you to screw them up!" My answer is always that if I was doing it for my benefit, I wouldn't do it as it's a lot of work; ultimately it is so the greens (and course) can be perfect the remainder of the time. The conversations are in good fun but it always reminds me to make sure other people not in the know are informed as to when and why we aerate. 

The course was perfect before we started!

I've covered aeration practices numerous times since I've started the blog so I wanted to do something a little different at the end of this one. But first I wanted to throw out a quick summary of why and when.

Getting started

4 machines (on 9) make quick work of the fairways

  

Why We Aerate and Topdress?

To make the turf better! By making holes in the turf, it speeds up and increases air exchange in the soil and for the roots - which helps rooting, which in turn makes the plant healthier as the roots are the  main driver of plant health. 

It removes thatch - the organic build up of roots and stolons that a turf like creeping bentgrass produces as it grows.

The remnants of a core (ie the thatch) on 8 fway which is what we're after

The Topdressing fills the holes, keeping the pore space open longer which again helps rooting. Topdressing reduces thatch as the sand dilutes the organic material. Reduced thatch means firmer surfaces that putt smooth and true.

Topdressing also smooths the surface, again helping provide faster truer greens.

 Starting the greens topdressing

Why is it done in the middle of August?

The weather is usually pretty good in mid- August so it means that the process can be done in a timely manner. The turf is usually growing well so recovery time is minimized over doing it when the turf is slow to heal. 

Lastly it helps with poa annua control as the turf is healed before poa germinates so there is less potential for the poa to get established in open aeration holes.  Read the USGA article on timing.

For more detailed info on timing, the reasons for and practice of aeration just use the search function to the right and it will bring up the previous discussions.

This was before noon on Monday. The greens were cleaned-up  past 7 and 1 fairway was fully done

So, onto this year!

As with the summer as a whole, the weather was perfect! Last week we got ~1.5" of rain which set the course up nicely in preparation for aeration. The weather was dry and not too hot while we performed all the procedures which meant that everything went to plan and it was a very clean process. Over the last few years we have always struggled with rain at some point or had to rush something to get it done before the rain. By having the dry weather, we were able to leave the greens open for a day before topdressing so they could be watered. This meant that the holes were fully open and the turf had a little time to recover before the topdressing and abrasive brushing. The greens looked fantastic even though the usual amount of sand was applied!

Blowing 9 fway

 Sweeping 9 fway

  

1 tee cleaned and the verticutting on the fairway is finished

For time purposes the fairway aeration is contracted out and this year the fairways were aerated at a closer spacing due to having to skip them in the spring. This slows the process down but Aercore - the contractor -  impressively got it all done in one day. This meant that we were able to verticut the fairways sooner than normal. The verticutting removes more thatch, removes grain and stands the turf up. A side benefit is it also fluffs up any aeration cores that get compacted so once the fairways are blown and swept they are perfectly clean. The fairways were then mown with groomers which made the most of the turf standing up to remove the grain. Although the verticutting pulls out dead material and causes a little scalping which in turn causes brown spots, the fairways looked fantastic and once they are mowed again next week - they will be perfect.

The tee aeration and topdressing went very smooth and the approaches got a much needed heavy topdressing also. 

Grooming 1 fairway (you can clearly see the line where the groomers have cut the standing up turf)

 Verticutting 7 fway - the diagonal cut helps remove the grain

Topdressing Tees

So at writing we are 5 days in and the course looks great. The greens were mowed today and we will work on getting them back up to speed. At the rate things are going I think they will be in good shape by next weekend and should be near perfect the following week. 

It's hard to believe the following two pictures were taken on Thursday afternoon, less than four days from starting

Mowing Greens on Sunday Morning

Due to the perfect weather and the rain, they were a little hairy!

So for the fun bit!

In the previous posts I have shown plenty of pictures of the procedures and what goes on while the course is closed but it doesn't provide a good picture of how much work it actually is.

The following are the 4 days of aeration in numbers:

Number of holes punched: 

Total:                               62,813,520

Greens:                            11,151,360

Tees:                                11,151,360

Fairways:                         39,204,000

DR:                                   1,306,800

Material Removed:

Total:                      1,666 cubic yards

Greens:                      194 cubic yards

Tees:                         322 cubic yards

Fairways:               1,113 cubic yards

DR:                             37 cubic yards

All the material on greens and tees was removed by hand!

Sand Used for Topdressing:

Total:                                 154 tons

Greens:                                66 tons

Tees and Approaches:          88 tons

Man-hours:

Total (for the 4 days)          1,251 hrs

The long range forecast is for a beautiful fall, so once the course heals in a week or so it will make for a perfect end to the season.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions: alan@ledgerockgolf.com