Geologic Problems

Of all the issues I try to mitigate as a golf course superintendent, geologic problems are always the hardest to remedy, and usually happen when they are least expected.  The Red River is very young, it formed only 9,500 years ago when Lake Agassiz drained, meaning that coupled with the constant flooding, the river valley is very prone to dramatic changes.

Apparently something shifted pretty dramatically down on the river bank recently.  Just last week we used the large compressor used to blow the water out of the irrigation system to blow the water out of our 6" water transfer line as well.  During the process, it looked like Old Faithful was going off there was so much air and water blowing out of the ground down on the river bank.

It appears that at some point in October, with all of the rain we had, the river bank took a severe slip back behind our maintenance facility.  The river pump transfer line pulled apart in two areas, once in an above ground section, and once again in an area where the pipe was buried about 3' deep.

We took the opportunity to dig up all of the broken pipe with the line out of use for the rest of the season.  We will repair the line as far back as it is broken, and leave the rest of the line disconnected and will just run it all above ground next summer.

We dug up about 120' of the line.

The first break separated the pipe about an inch

The fitting on the right, a gasketed coupler called a "knock on" fitting, used
to overlap the pipe on the left by about 6".  So here, the pipe moved about
10".  Kind of scary how much the ground is moving down by the river....

A scarp face is beginning to form where the bank is literally breaking
off and falling into the river.

Amazingly, this huge cottonwood is still standing, however
it is starting to press against our pipe.

This situation has future disaster written all over it.  Hence the reason the
entire line is coming out and getting moved next spring.  

Nursery Update

I blogged back in July about the new bentgrass nursery that we seeded this summer.  It is close to about 3,000 square feet and was seeded to Alpha bentgrass, a newer variety that we used to sod and seed our new tees with this spring.

Although I have to admit that tending to our nursery fell pretty low on the priority list this summer, we did manage to get a pretty good stand of grass established by this fall.  At this point, I am cautiously optimistic that we will be able to harvest that turf first thing in the spring for a variety of uses.

Most importantly, as soon as we are finished doing the final seeding on our new tees in the spring, we will be able to sod a small pad in the middle of the teebox that will be available for immediate use while the rest of the seed is growing in.  What this means is that the use of temporary tee boxes should be very limited this coming spring.

Secondly, with whatever is left, we will be sodding out any of the dead collars around the greens.  Unfortunately, after 3 years in ND, I can honestly say that there will probably never be a "perfect" winter where at least some of the Poa Annua that so heavily infests our collars will not be dead.  Every spring thus far we have aggressively slit seeded bentgrass into some of these dead areas, but it has been an agonizingly slow wait for the bentgrass seed to germinate and the Poa to slowly fill its self back in around the collars.  Having an immediate stash of sod to use to instantly fix the worst of the dead areas will be really helpful.

3,000 sq ft of pure Alpha bliss ready to find a new home out on the golf course this coming spring!

If all goes well we should have all of this harvested and utilized out on the golf course by the end of May.  And then we get to rebuilt it and start over!  Next time, I am hoping to expand our bentgrass nursery to closer to 5,000 sq. ft. as well as seed another 10,000 sq. ft. to a newer blend of low mow bluegrass for use in our fairways.  It seems like a guy can never have too much sod on hand just in case....

Back Into The Swamp

The last 2 weeks have brought us close to 4" of rain.  We have had to pump bunkers more times in the month of October that we did in June, July, and August combined!  Combined with continuous leaf cleanup and a very small staff, it seems like we haven't been able to get a single thing done on the course recently that I would have liked to.

Worse yet, going into fall with completely saturated soils, and ditches and river channels already half full of water certainly isn't a good scenario for us going into spring flood season.  After all of this moisture in the fall, it is going to be vital that we receive a below average precipitation winter in order to avoid a large spring flood.  Definitely way too early to start thinking about that stuff, but unfortunately its always on my radar.

We are slowly getting to a few of the last tees that we needed to renovate this year.  4 tee has been rough shaped and sand capped, and 6, 7, and 11 tees have the old turf surface removed.  We need a few more days of good drying so we can get the skid steer back into a few bunkers to get some sand out to cap those tees with.  1 tee will be the last one we do.

Leaves and water make for a horrible mess this time of year.

We are in bad need of adding some significant gravel to our cartpats next
year.  Some paths have depressed so far that they are more of a water
channel than a cartpath after a big rain.

After the leaves in the bunkers get rained on, the water washes sand over
the leaves making them impossible to blow.  We have to rake out most of
the leaves out of the bunkers after the latest rain.

6 tee stripped off and ready for sand

A great view of the thatch layer that was left over even after the top 1" of
turf surface was removed.  This layer is one of the main reasons that
we are renovating the tees by removing the surface and capping
with sand.

Fortunately we were able to sneak in our cartpath project on hole 9 before all the rain came.  I am really excited about this area as it will make a great focal point for everyone driving up to the clubhouse.  We formed a landscaping bed below the main retaining wall that we will plant full of flowers next year.

We are starting to get pretty good at pouring roundabouts.

Andy putting the finishing touches on the new cartpath

Lastly, believe it or not there have been a few nice fall days for golf, so I will end this post on a positive note.

What Happened To September

Somehow a month has blown by since my last blog post in late August.  Things change pretty quickly this time of year in our part of the world.  During the month of September, we lost a total of 1hr and 40 minutes of daylight.  October will be just as dramatic, meaning that during our two "fall" months of golf, we will lose close to 3.5 hours of daylight.

September in particular is a very challenging month for the maintenance department out on the golf course for a variety of reasons:

1.  Staffing is reduced by almost 50% from the peak hours worked over the summer.  Most of the college staff has either quit or is working part time hours.

2.  There are still a lot of tournaments during the month, so there is lots of prep work, just with fewer people.

3.  The sun starts to show up a lot later in the morning, meaning lots of days we put in the first hour or two of work with headlights and flashlights.

4.  Leaves.  Lots of them.  Before we can mow anything or rake a bunker this time of year, the leaves have to be blown out of the way first.

5.  Lastly, we have a lot of agronomic practices to complete in September, mainly aeration and some additional fertilization.

Without a doubt, the leaves are the biggest obstacle for us right now.  I would wager that this time of year we spend a solid 20-30 man hours every week just keeping the leaves blown off of the greens, tees, fairways, and bunkers and mulching them up with the rough mower.  Windy days are particularly challenging, when the leaves tend to collect in bunker lips.  

A bunker that was blown and raked in the morning,
already filled back in with leaves by lunchtime.

The cottonwood leaves are particularly problematic as they fall from much
higher and have more of a tendency to drift in the wind.

Aeration of both the greens and tees went very well a few weeks ago.  There was one small hiccup with the new machine on 2 and 3 green after a pin that holds the depth adjuster sheared off.  We pulled 5/8" cores out of both the greens and the newly sodded tees, and did solid 3/4" tines on the seeded tee boxes.  All told we used about 70 tons of sand to fill the approximately 5,800,000 holes we poked in the turf in just 2 days.  We pushed a quite a bit of both liquid and granular fertilizers on the greens afterward in an effort to get the holes to grow over a little quicker as well.

Pulling cores out of 2 tee

Transferring sand between topdressers

Cleaning up cores.  Hard work, never fun, but worth it all in the end!

14 green covered with sand before being brushed into the holes.

September definitely went by insanely fast.  Now coming up in October we are in need of a "killing" frost, something down in the upper 20s that will finally send the turf on its descent into dormancy so we don't have to mow quite as much.  Also a really hard frost will get the rest of the leaves to drop off the trees and put us out of our groundhog day misery of blow, mulch, blow, mulch, blow, mulch.....

What Goes In The Sprayer

I field this question from golfers relatively often throughout the summer, about what goes in the spray tank.  With all the disease pressure that we have been dealing with on the golf course this week, I figured that now would be a good time for a blog post about it.

There are four main groups of products that we spray on the turf:  liquid fertilizers, pesticides, growth regulators, and wetting agents.

Without a doubt, the number one used product that goes in our sprayer are growth regulators.  The sprayer almost never leaves the shop without some sort of growth regulator in it.  We utilize three different types of regulators, all of which in some sort of way affect growth hormones that are produced within the turfgrass plant.  One regulator we use is specifically for controlling leaf growth, which in turn focuses more of the plant's energy into growing laterally and producing roots.  Another regulator we utilize strictly for inhibiting seedhead production of the Poa Annua on the greens.  And the last regulator is used to both control growth as well as to help give bentgrass a competitive advantage over the Poa Annua in the turf stand.

Fertilizers are also a very standard addition to our sprayer mixes.  Applying small, controlled amounts of foliar fertilizers helps to feed the plant the nutrients that it needs to stay healthy, without producing excessive flushes of growth which is common when applying granular fertilizers.  Common nutrients that are sprayed foliarly are Nitrogen, Potassium, Calcium, and Iron.

Wetting agents are sprayed mainly on the greens and tees to help us more effectively utilize water.  As thatch starts to accumulate in the rootzone, the soil and sand particles start to accumlate waxy coatings that cause them to become hydrophobic (literally, afraid of water)  Wetting agents help to break the bonds of these coatings allowing water to not only better penetrate into the soil, but to also be held better in the soil and thus more available to plant roots.

The last group of products we spray on the golf course are pesticides, which encompasses fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides.  Within these groups are literally thousands of different chemistries, of which we only keep about 30 different kinds on hand.  These products are always used very judiciously on the golf course.  There are very specific thresholds and circumstances that require the use of all of these, it is only sound economic and environmental stewardship to use these if and when they are needed.

All of these products are very benign to humans and animals when used properly.  Nevertheless, there is still the potential for runoff or leaching of any product that is applied on the course, so we are always mindful of the weather conditions before, during, and after a spray application.

Andy mixing up a tank of growth regulator, fungicide, and liquid Iron.

A rare glimpse into the chemical storage room.  All of these products are kept
in a locked room separate from the main shop area.  On these shelves lie the
secrets of great and healthy turf....

Summer Continues, Fashionably Late

The last two weeks have felt like summer has known that it's days are numbered, but for good measure it had to make its presence felt one last time so we wouldn't forget about it.

With the last two weeks of July, and the first two weeks of August being rather cool and mild, the turf on the golf course could not have been happier.  Warm, but not hot days (75-80) and cool nights (45-55) are the absolute perfect growing temperature for our turf grasses, mainly bentgrass, bluegrass, and annual bluegrass (Poa Annua).  While we could have used some more moisture during that timeframe, the favorable temperatures made turf management dare I say easy for a couple of weeks!

But as it usually happens in life, all good things must come to an end.  This late summer heat wave has brought a heavy dose of 90 degree days, and even worse, warm night time temperatures, which prevent the turf from having an adequate amount of time to recover from the hot days.  

The real kicker during a heatwave however is humidity, and how we control soil moisture.  There is a very fine line between too much water and not enough water for us without any drainage on the golf course and a heavy Poa Annua population.  If we overwater the course and the humidity stays high overnight, we have created a perfect breeding ground for disease development.  However, if we under water the course, and the humidity drops too low during a 90 degree afternoon and a south wind picks up, our shallow rooted Poa will burn out in a heartbeat.  Thus far we seemed to have been doing a pretty good job controlling our irrigation output, however, on Monday night we received a quick .10" of rain, and with that followed an extremely sticky and humid evening and overnight period.

While the greens had been sprayed preventatively with fungicide last week before the heat wave started, we didn't have a chance to get around to spraying the tees.  The fairways were due for a preventative application about 2 weeks ago, but since the weather had been so favorable, I made the decision to skip the application since it isn't a cheap one.  It doesn't make sense to spend the money to spray if the weather conditions don't warrant it.  Hindsight being what it is, I am wishing we would have sprayed the fairways.  Such is life...

The greens have held up fine recently, but this morning with the extremely high overnight humidity we saw some of the most active disease development on the tees and fairways that I have seen so far in my 3 summers here.

The black tee on 14 exploded with Brown Patch, the first case I have ever
seen here so far.  Surprisingly, that was the only tee affected.

There is still some question as to whether this is Dollar Spot or
Pythium Blight.  It developed in some of the wet spots in the fairways.

A few of our newly sodded tees developed a very minor case of
Dollar Spot.  Only on 3 and 8 tee have I found any.

We were so close to making it through the entire summer without any major disease outbreaks, but this morning changed that very quickly.  The sprayer spent the rest of the day out on the course spraying both control and prevent fungicides on the tees and a few of the worst affected fairways.

Andy out spraying tees.

Countdown to Ignition

After trimming the thousands of Ash trees on the course all summer, our tree limb dumping areas were starting to get a little spread out.  Today I rented a skid steer for an hour just to push the branches up into a pile so that we would have some more area to dump more limbs.  I must say, it really hit me while pushing up the piles how many trees we have trimmed so far this year.  So far there are a total of 4 piles of brush, each about 40 feet across and probably 10-15 feet high.

Deep down inside of me, the pyromaniac instincts of my childhood are welling up with excitement to light all of these.  Once the first good snowfall is on the ground this fall, the propane torches are coming out and the hotdog roasting sticks are getting sharpened.  Stand back, I think they might be a little toasty....