It is green!

Yes, the greens are green!

I've had a few questions about what we sprayed on the greens last week that made them green. It was not "paint"! It was a plant health product that we use with our snow mold application and it has a green pigment. The green pigment is what you see on the turf. At the very least it should make our snow mold application more effective and it may even help delay dormancy as well as help the plant "wake up" in the spring.

The initial green color is real green. However the sun and rain have already started to mellow the color out towards a more natural looking green.

We did the West course last week and will be doing the East course in the next few days.

Picture below shows a sprayed green ( members/right ) versus a green that isn't sprayed ( public/left ). If you played last week you can probably already see the dulling of color.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope everyone had a good holiday.

We are having some really nice winter golf weather. Tuesday we mowed collars, approaches, and greens on the West course and put down our snow mold application.

Cold!

Wow it was cold for a few days last week. It isn't exactly balmy this morning but we will see some reasonable temperatures this afternoon and seemingly for the week ahead. We will hopefully have our snow mold applications down this week and that will signify the end of our spraying and mowing season.

We have finally finished brush hogging down the "high grass areas". I've referred to them as three different names in my short two months here. Started as "fescue areas", but there really isn't enough fescue left to refer to them that way. So I started using the term "native areas" but found out that doesn't really fit either since what we have growing in those areas aren't really natives. "Poorly maintained, overgrown weedy areas" isn't exactly flattering so we will go with high grass areas for at least a few weeks.

Anyway, so we have finished the brush hogging of the high grass areas. We have now moved to mowing them with a rough mower set at five inches. This will do two things: it will do a better job of mulching up the debris that was left by the brush hog and it should start to thin these areas out as they begin to grow back in this spring. If we have time, after mowing them at five inches, we will go back out and mow them at three inches before spring. That is the goal at least but we have other things we'd like to do and weather will be a factor.

We also did some work that really excites me last week: tree work! During my first few weeks I tried to take note of what I felt were the weakest looking greens. Could be just a thin turf stand, poor recovery of ball marks, or poor aeration recovery when compared to some other greens. The 18th green on the West course seemed to show a bit of all three. It is narrow and pin spots are somewhat limited, which I'm sure doesn't help the cause. Going into aeration a bit on the lean side could have also slowed recovery. However, what I took note of was the trees to the eastern side of the green.

It is generally understood that morning and midday shade is more harmful to turf than afternoon shade. I also have no doubt that spring and summer shade causes more problems for us as turf managers than fall and winter shade. Which makes sense right? Shade is just an extra stress for plants. So adding an extra issue to an already stressed plant isn't helping.

To help the situation we removed eight trees between #18 green West and #1 tee West. The trees we removed were shading the green from sunrise all the way through until about 800am. The sun doesn't rise in the same spot everyday. It will move based on time of the year. I have an app on my phone that will show me the suns path on any given date. In this instance I used July 1st since it is around that time that the turf is stressed the most.

It doesn't get better than a cold winter day and a fresh cutting chain ... to me at least. Thanks for reading!

Screenshot of application showing sun rising through the trees ...

Screenshot of application showing sun rising after trees removed ...

Picture standing on the green from further back post tree removal ...

Winter!

After all of the rain the last few days, I thought this post may be appropriate. While the calendar may say otherwise, we have entered winter mode. The grass is growing very little, if at all. Things are soggy and soft. And we get very little help from the sun.

So what does that mean? Any wear or damage we sustain will be with us until April. This includes frost damage, ball marks, divots, old cup plugs, and any wear or damage from cart traffic. 

What can you do? Make sure you replace divots and fix ball marks. Bear with us with cart rules also. We may have a nice day here and there, but if we've been wet or frozen, we will still likely be on the cart paths with the carts. Our only motive for keeping carts on the path is to protect the golf course for the days, months, and years to come. 

Read more from the USGA below ... 

USGA: Winter On the Golf Course

Irrigation blowout ...

And no it wasn't a Black Friday sale! Despite being snow-covered we completed our annual irrigation blowout. Things seemingly went as well as we could have hoped. The pump station was winterized and we are in the process of covering the satellite boxes for the winter.

Another task closer to spring of 2020! 

Boxes covered ... 

Blow out in the snow! 

Bad plugs!?!?

While talking to various folks the last few weeks I've stated that we are working to fix the bad plugs or bad cup plugs on the greens. A few people have asked what I meant. So let me explain ...

The "cup plug" is the turf and soil pulled out of the green in a cylinder shape by the cup cutter. After pulling out that cylinder of turf and soil you place the cup in the hole that is left and use a "cup setter" to push the cup down into place. The cup setter also smooths the edges and eliminates any "crown" around the cup. You than take that cylinder of dirt that we now know as the plug, and place it into the hole the cup came out of. Generally, it should fit pretty close to perfect. Perfect being level with the surface of the green and having no gap around the edge.

On occasion, the plug doesn't fit exactly perfect and we have to fix it. To fix it you pop the turf or top part of the plug off and either add or remove soil to get the plug level. There is some artistry involved here. It is a skill you only perfect by practice which makes a good cup guy invaluable.

In the picture below there are six bad plugs, which is unacceptable in such a small area. The red circles, are plugs that are too low. The purple circles, are plugs that are too high. The best case scenario with a high plug is a cup sized bump in the green and the worst case is a dead "scalped" plug. Scalping is when the mower cuts off all the leaf tissue leaving only the crown of the plant or worse, dirt. The plugs that end up too low create a slight depression in the green. In my opinion, a low plug is better than a high plug. Generally the grass will grow up and either fix or mask the poorly done job. A high plug, especially a scalped one, dies. "If it's low it grows, if it's high it dies" is what I was once told when I was an aspiring greenskeeper. That being said, the result should end up as close to perfect as possible.

( the white stuff is just spray foamer )

A close look at a low plug ...

A close look at a high plug that is scalped slightly on the right side ... 

With all that being said, we will reassess who our cup changers are going forward, coach them up, and raise the expectations. The area around the cup is the one area that 99% of the players will see. It needs to look sharp. 

Snow today! Apparently. There are few things prettier than a golf course covered in a fresh blanket of snow.