Spring Temperatures Update

Here are the weather stats for the last 4 days:
                                                                                                           (82 avg)           (58 avg)
                      Hi    Avg Hi    Diff             Lo   Avg Lo    Diff             July Hi equiv    July Lo equiv
March 19       74      36        +38            59      18         +41                  120                    99
March 18       74      35        +39            47      17         +30                  121                    88
March 17       70      34        +36            36      17         +19                  118                    77
March 16       71      34        +37            32      16         +16                  119                    74

Pretty scary comparison.  I think I could safely say, if we were to experience a similar stretch of weather in the middle of the summer, almost every growing plant in the state of North Dakota would be dead. 

However, since this is still early spring, everything loves it!  The grass on the course is already starting to green up nicely, a full 3-4 weeks ahead of where we were at last year.  I don't think anyone is complaining.  Just don't ask me the same thing if this were July....

Seasonal confusion

So, the calendar says that today was March 16th.  NOAA tells me that the climatological average for this date should give us a daily high temperature of 34 degrees.  The mercury topped out today at 71 officially, that broke the previous record of 62 by 9 degrees, and was 37 degrees above the normal temperature, more than double what it should be.

To put that into perspective, imagine if this had been July 16th instead.  Our average high temperature would be 82.  Imagine a day like today, 37 degrees above average and it would have been 119 degrees!  Or, if it had been double the average like today, it would have been 164 degrees, otherwise known as complete global annihilation....

Regardless of how you look at it, something is messed up.  There is no such thing as "normal" for today's planet.  Although everyone around here loves an early spring, this is a bit much.  From keeping in contact with some other Superintendent buddies of mine from around the north central US, I think we are all rather concerned about what this summer could potentially bring based on the winter we had and the spring we are off to so far.  A few months of "normal" would be great come June, July, and August...

Driving Range open on March 16th, and weather nice enough
apparently for shorts and short sleeves.

Andy and I took advantage of the nice weather today also, by finally
getting out of the shop and putting the finishing touches on
the concrete retaining wall by our new cartpath by 16 tee.

What else could you ask for in mid-March?

One last thing, I have received quite a few questions about the green color on the greens and tees out on the course.  If anyone remembers, when we sprayed our snowmold fungicides last winter, there was a green pigment that went down also.  This product known as Civitas contains a very long lasting green harmonizing pigment that stays on the plant until it starts to grow again in the spring and gets mowed off. 

Amazingly, there is some university based evidence showing that turf painted green during the winter months tends to grow and green up faster in the spring, speeds recovery time, and in general leads to healthier, denser turf.  Surprisingly, from what I have been able to gather so far, no one knows scientifically why this is, but a lot of trained "researcher" eyes have been noticing a difference.  I guess we'll see for ourselves here soon....

Putting green and 1 tee looking quite green from the pigment we
applied last fall, especially compared to the incredibly brown
and dormant rough right now.

Spring Update

Below is an excerpt from a blog post I wrote on November 3rd last year after we finished our snowmold spraying applications....

On a side note, I made the decision not to apply snow mold fungicide to the lower part of 9 fairway and all of 17 fairway, as these two areas in particular have been a total loss 3 out of the last 3 years from the floods.  I guess it just seemed like a reasonable risk to take to save the money that will be wasted if the flood kills all the grass there anyway.  It was kind of a roll of the dice, but if we happen to luck out enough to not have to reseed those two areas after the flood in the spring, having a little bit of snow mold to deal with will still feel like a walk in the park!

Well, the dice were certainly rolled, and of course it is doubtful at the current time that we will see a flood event large enough this spring to kill 9 and 17 fairway.  And of course, that in and of its self is definitely a blessing.  However, now we are left to deal with the other end of that gamble from last fall.

Lines from where the sprayer booms were turned off
at the lower part of 9 fairway from last fall.

Textbook Grey Snow Mold under where a little drift sat
on the untreated side of 9 fairway.

As you can clearly see, the top part of 9 fairway that received our full snow mold treatment last fall is not only disease free, but the turf is quite dense and robust (although a little brown and dorman still.)  There are perfect lines from where the booms on the sprayer were turned off last fall leaving the lower part of 9 fairway untreated, resulting in what appears to be 50%-80% disease coverage.  We experienced a total of 71 days of snowcover this winter, which I'm guessing is about 20-30 days fewer than average in this part of the country.  Snow mold disease pressure starts to ramp up at about 60 days, and gets pretty intense after 90 days.  Apparently 71 days here is plenty enough though....

The good news is, there doesn't appear to be one breakthough of even a tiny bit of snow mold on any of the rest of the greens, tees, and fairways.  Only the bottom part of 9 and most of 17 fairway got hit, which was to be expected.  Fortunately, although the sight of the snow mold damage will stick around for a bit in those two fairways, we can do a few other things to speed up the recovery in those spots.  Grey snow mold doesn't actually kill the turf plant, just the living foliage.  Once green up occurs here in the next few weeks, we will verticut and fertilize the snow mold areas and they should grow out of their damage on their own in only a couple of extra weeks.  Might be a little unsightly, but it is still better than being drowned out in a flood.

Two other side notes:  the snowfence we up up on the backs of the greens last fall seems to have done a great job holding the snow on the greens.  No greens appear to be very dessicated or show signs of severe cracking from the deep freeze.  Also, the ice damage from the snowmobiles at this time doesn't appear to have caused too much damage on the greens.  There will definitely be a little bit of dead Poa here and there, but nothing too bad.

Ice from the snowmobiles on the side of 16 green
is clearly visible as the snow starts to melt off.

And of course, the question I know is in everyone's mind......How soon will the course open?  Well, the answer to that is, I have no idea.  This will be my second spring in North Dakota, and I have a feeling we are going to experience the polar opposite of 2011, but I've been wrong before.  The course obviously has some serious drying out to do in the next couple weeks, and who knows if this stretch of nice weather is going to stick around for any length of time.  My best guess would be to say that we should all be pretty ecstatic if we were playing golf by the beginning of April, and already had our spring mini-flood out of the way.

Hole 6 during the melt off on Monday, looks like we got our flood
on the high holes this spring...

Staying Busy in the Shop

Well, we've finally received some decent snow here in Southern Canada, so Andy and I have been pretty holed up in the shop for the last month or so.  The plus side to that however, is that we've been forced to be very focused on all the extra little projects we were wanting to tackle this winter. 

First things first, I've harbored a deep hatred for our old, faded, oversized, plastic golf ball tee markers since the day I stepped foot on the property here back in April last year.  Well, we finally did something about it.

The new tee markers are made of 2x6 cedar lumber, cut to 6" lengths with ends beveled at a 45* angle.  They were sanded smooth on all sides (Andy went through a couple of dust masks), then stamped with our custom cut metal brand that was laser cut at a local metal shop.  The ends were then painted to color, a metal spike put in the bottom, and then the entire piece was dunked in an outdoor weatherproof UV resistant urethane.....3 times. 

We made 160 total (40 each of red, white, blue, and black).  It took about a week.  There is a serious amount of Andy's and my blood, sweat, and tears in each one.  That being said, PLEASE REFRAIN FROM HITTING THEM WITH YOUR GOLF CLUBS!!!!  We made 4 extras of each color, because accidents do happen, but there is a good chance that I will shed a tear the first time one of them breaks...

Turning the shop into a manufacturing plant

The metal brand heating up on a hot plate with a few freshly
stamped tee markers nearby

Our pride and joy of the tee marker making assembly.  If anyone wants
into the "GFCC FOR LIFE" club, let me know, we can stamp the red-hot brand
in the middle of your back.  Andy and I already have one....

Andy putting the third coat of urethane on the reds

finished products

Once we had the shop covered in saw dust, we figured we may as well work on some of the rest of the wood products.  If you remember from one of the previous blog posts this year, we are transitioning away from the red/white/blue 150 yd stake indicating pin placement depth on the green in favor of a new pin placement sheet.

Our friendly new golf pro Jeff insisted that we just HAD to have some sort of new yardage markers on the course since the 150 yard stakes were gone.  Since I'm not very good at saying no to anyone, and I wouldn't let him buy some insanely expensive premanufactured junk out of a golf products catalog, we made some new 100, 150, and 200 yard stakes.  Made of 4x4 cedar wood posts, the tops are painted to color and then coated in the same outdoor urethane as the tee markers. 

Let me state for the record, I really HATE any kind of yardage markers on the golf course.  Not only do they clutter up the course with a bunch of weird colors, but it is just one more thing we have to mow and trim around and keep clean.  I did this just for you Jeff.  Oh yeah, and all you wonderful golfers.

And since it is such a pain in the rear to trim around posts, and the never ending assault from a string trimmer tends to eat away at the bottom of wood posts over time, I came up with this idea.  We poured 6"thick concrete blocks in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket with a 4x4 steel sleeve in the middle.  We will set the concrete blocks in the rough where the posts are going to go, and this way we can pull the posts out to mow or trim the grass around them.  Furthermore, I thought it might be neat to dye the concrete green so it would be more visually appealing on the course.  We made a total of 42 yardage posts and concrete blocks (3 markers per hole times 14 holes, since the par 3's don't need yardage markers.)

green concrete blocks curing in the back of the shop

Lastly, since apparently we have to heed Jeff's every beck and call now, we made 20 new driving range space dividers.  No longer will there just be two old faded pieces of yellow rope laying on the ground to tee off between on the driving range.  These beauties are also made of 2x6 cedar lumber, branded in the middle with the GFCC logo, and then 5 holes were drilled on each side of the logo to set up with tees in them.  Not pictured, I also made two new cedar trash can receptacles for the driving range as well.  My last piece, that is still yet to be built, is a cedar range sign that has a clock built into it along with 6 different yardages that Jeff can update daily with the exact yardages to the target flags on the range based on where the driving range is set up at that day.

This is probably going to be the extent of out wood construction projects this winter, as hopefully we are going to get an early spring (knock on wood, no pun intended) and can get back out on the course soon to wrap up our tee construction projects from last fall.  Just so everyone knows, the plan for next winter is do redo all the holes signs on the course as well as the trash can holders.  Then we will officially be free from all the old course accessory junk that has been on the golf course for the last 30 years.

Truth in Advertising

I'll admit, I'm not the type of person that is usually swayed by gimmicks or marketing, but this is one ad I can get behind.  If anyone hasn't noticed, I'm a religious Carhartt wearer.  I have an entire fleet of their work pants, some that have seen well more than 5 years of duty on the golf course that are still going strong. 

Something about this ad strikes a particular chord with me, I think a lot of who I am and what I stand for comes out in this....

The Need for More Maintenance Vehicles

I came across this video today looking through some of my pictures from last summer.  I find it fun to do that this time of year, the thought of green grass is so far out of mind right now that you start to need a bit of a reminder that there actually is a golf course out there, and summer really does exist!

Anyway, I shot this video last July after we core aerified the putting green.  We needed to use our buffalo blower to clear some of the debris off before we could topdress it, and low and behold, all of our maintenance carts were being used out on the course by the rest of the crew.  Fortunately, Andy rose to the occasion and was literally the "workhorse" of the crew that day.

That being said, we do need an additional utility vehicle for the maintenance fleet here soon.  If anyone has a line on an old 70's jeep or something I wouldn't be too picky...

Hole 4 green sample update

Just as I had hoped, our plug from under the ice from the snowmobile tracks on 4 green has come back to life nicely.  It has been sitting in the window of my office now for about a week and is ready to be mowed.  I may have to get out a pair of scissors and give it a haircut just to have that smell of fresh cut grass in my office in Feburary....