Winter Wonderland

Without a doubt, we are off to the best winter we have seen in the 3 years I have been here.  2011 didn't bring us a single snowflake until New Years Eve, leaving the turf to suffer the effects of brutally cold temperatures and drying winds.  2012 brought us a good early snowcover, but then was completely ruined in early January by a rainstorm that created ice all over the golf course.  2013 however has brought a healthy dose of early season snow, that has the turf completely covered and protected from the elements.  We just need this snow to stick around and avoid any mid winter melt cycles or rain (knock on wood).  If we can do that, we actually stand a chance coming out in the spring looking pretty good, as long as we don't get too much more snow in the coming months (again, knock on wood.....)

Early winter 2011 was so dry and open that cigarettes thrown out of cars
in the parking lot were catching the grass on fire!

Early January last year brought us a rainstorm that instantly created
ice, all across the golf course.

December this year has brought us the perfect cover of snow
to keep the turf protected and insulated.

Last week we experienced some brutally cold temperatures, dropping as low as -21 one morning.  To illustrate how much of an insulating effect the snow has on the turf surface, I dug a small hole on 16 green and checked the temperature on the turf surface underneath about 8" of snow.  The air temperature that morning was -16.  The surface of the turf under the snow was a balmy +20.  This 36 degree difference literally is the difference in life and death for Poa Annua.

December of 2013 has definitely created a winter wonderland.  We have already accumulated a total of about 17" of snow so far for the month, with still another 2 weeks to go.  The average snowfall for the entire month is only 12", so we are well ahead of that number.  Furthermore, the temperatures have been brutal.  The temperatures for the first 17 days of the months have so far added up to an average of 0 degrees, which is a whopping 14 degrees colder than average.  Global warming at its finest....

For me, one of the best times of the year on the golf course is the dead of
winter.  The complete peace, silence, and solitude on days like this are what
make the place so special.

Irrigation Pond Fixes

Now that the ground is frozen and our friends at Florians Excavating have a few spare moments, we finally were able to tackle the leaking pond overflow culvert.  I discovered back in the middle of the summer that the 15" steel pipe that acts as the high level overflow to the pond, had rusted out somewhere below the water level and was leaking approximately 50 GPM, or 72,000 gallons per day, or somewhere in the neighborhood of 11,000,000 gallons over the course of the summer.  That was all water that we had to pay to pump back into the pond to keep it full.  Needless to say, it was a big deal to get this taken care of.  The old steel culvert was dug back about 5' into the pond bank, smashed, buried in 5,000 lbs of concrete, and then covered back up in dirt.  A new culvert was then dug in about 100' to the north.

Nothing is quite as exciting as that moment when a 25 year old piece of junk
(pain in my rear end) gets torn out of the ground to get replaced!

The new culvert is set entirely above the normal water level, meaning it can
never "leak."  Also, we set the new overflow level about 5" higher than
the old culvert, meaning our pond is capable of holding an extra 335,000
gallons now.

Good time of the year to tear things up....

The new overflow empties out into Cole Creek about 100' further north
of the old pipe, and is piped much closer to the actual creek bank, so
hopefully the bank failure will not continue so rapidly there.

When we finished installing the new overflow pipe, we then turned our attention to the other side of the irrigation pond by 14 fairway.  Back in the beginning of November I removed the old steel culvert that had heaved out of the ground there, with the intention of replacing it with a more functional culvert.  We were able to install a new 8" culvert underneath 14 fairway that will allow us to pump water out of the lakes north of the property without having to actually pump the water into our irrigation pond first.  When the lake level begins to drop as the summer progresses, we will have the ability to close that pipe, and fill our irrigation pond via the river pump or a pump on 14 fairway.

Furthermore, while we had the area torn up, we also installed a 4" pipe and some electrical conduit.  Next spring we should be able to buy a small electric pump that can be installed on the north side of 14 fairway, and pump water from the lake to our irrigation pond through the 4" pipe.  If all goes well, we should never have to use a gas pump or blue hoses on 14 fairway ever again....

Removing the old steel culvert that had heaved up in 14 fairway.

Installation of the new 8" pipe

Lots of new utilities installed under 14 fairway.

Like a lot of the projects we do on the golf course, this one will never be seen or directly affect anyone playing golf, but the impacts that it will have on the way we manage the golf course will be huge.  One of the biggest challenges we have had the last few summers has been trying to keep our irrigation pond full.  Not only will these two projects eliminate countless headaches for me and my staff and allow us to focus on more important aspects of the course, but the cost savings (mostly in fuel costs for the gas pumps, as well as more limited electrical power to run the river pump) should add up to a decent amount next summer as well.  And lastly, after we regrade and reseed the area in the middle of 14 fairway next spring, we should finally be able to have some nice turf there next year!

Drainage Upgrades

For those of you who played the course any this year a day or two after one of our big spring or fall rainstorms, you can surely understand the need for more drainage on our course.  While it would be nice to add drainage to the entire course, there are really only a few spots we need to concentrate our efforts in order to make a big difference

A bunker pond after a June rainstorm

Way too much water, and difficult to get rid of

Almost the entire right rough on 6 about 150 yard to the green
and in was standing water during June.

Bunkers in particular are a major concern.  Since they are completely shaped out of clay underneath the sand, they are essentially just a giant bathtub after a rain.  Even after a moderate rainfall, we have to pump out usually about 30 of our 45 bunkers, a huge waste of man hours, plus the fact that repeated pumping starts to destroy the integrity of the bunker.  As of this fall, we have installed drainage (perforated pipe covered with gravel, and then covered with a synthetic liner material to keep the rock separate from the sand above) in 14 bunkers.  We took the opportunity this week to actually continue those drains to daylight somewhere so that they are finally functional.

Secondly, holes 6 and 11 were in desperate need of some additional drainage.  There was some drainage installed on hole 6 back in the early 90s I believe, but after having located and dug up a few of those pipes, the old perforated pipe was either mostly or completely filled with soil, rendering them ineffective.  We started in the worst area, front left of 6 green, by adding a 12" sump basin in the lowest point, and then trenching a 3" drain line about 160' across 6 fairway to the sump basin in the right rough, which then empties into the drainage canal that parallels hole 2.

Hole 11 received some help as well in the trench it shares with holes 12.  After shooting a ton of grade points, I determined that the trench doesn't and can't even actually drain its self.  The farm ditch on the other side of 12 cartpath is actually higher than the lowest point in the trench.  We installed a 12" sump in the lowest point of the trench, which happened to be in the rough about ten feet right of 11 fairway.  We then added french drains (perforated pipe covered with pea gravel, and then sand all the way to the surface) in both directions of the trench.  We will still have to pump the trench out after a large rain, but the sump basin should make that process much easier, and the french drains will help dry out the rest of the trench, especially in 11 fairway where it has always been wet and devoid of any real turf cover.

Going to work on hole 6

French drain line going up the trench in 11 fairway

Bunker drain on 11

After 2 straight days running the trencher, my arms feel like jello...

Also, we have been harvesting the huge pile of old, flooded bunker sand that is piled up in the native area behind 6 tee, and using to fill in some of the really bad settled trenches in other areas of the golf course.  That has been one of my huge complaints about this course since I have been here, you can hardly drive a cart through the rough on some holes without bouncing your golf clubs off the cart.  By filling the trenches with sand, the drains can still function underneath, and the grass should easily grow back and fill the areas in this coming spring with the help of a little additional seeding.

Andy filling in old drainage lines in the right rough on 6

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.....