A picture seven months in the making and protecting the greens ...

Look back if you will to this post made on December 23rd of 2019 about the removal of trees around the 18th green on the West course.

Now fast forward to just a few days ago. Here is the result of our work in December ...

We started here ... 

Used an application to map the sun ... 

Removed the trees ... 

And ended here ... 

Think that helped the green? I do. 

Have you seen the weather forecast? I sure have. This will probably be our most difficult stretch of the summer. Mid-July, the greens are already stressed, and now we will add some real heat and humidity with the possibility of some downpours. All of that equals tough conditions for the turf. 

If you played this morning ( Friday the 17th ) you may have seen us spraying and than watering the greens. Yes, we were watering after spraying despite the fact it was drizzling. We did this because we sprayed a product that needs somewhere between 1/10th to 1/8th of an inch of water to properly protect the plants. We want it to protect from the roots up, so we have to irrigate it into the roots. I apologize for it being done on a Friday, but after seeing the forecast worsen for the next few days, I felt it was best to get it down. We also had a soil surfactant in the tank that will allow us to use less water and more evenly distribute the water we do use in the next couple weeks. 

Along the same lines, we will adjust our mowing schedule while the heat is intense. Tomorrow ( Saturday ) we will cut greens and do a clean up pass. Sunday we will roll. Monday we will skip both cutting and rolling to give the greens a break and we will also spray them again. Tuesday we will cut with a clean up pass and base what we do for the rest of the week on the weather. 

We put a lot of time into bunkers this week. After 4.5 inches of rain last weekend they needed some serious work. They should be much better for this weekend. 

Stay cool!

Mowing! And pond clean up ...

Warm weather upon more warm weather. That has been the theme of this winter for sure.

Things are rolling right along. Everything except the greens have been mowed. We plan to mow them tomorrow ( Monday ) morning.

We are still strategically removing trees. Concentrating on those that are shading putting greens or that are dead and or dangerous.

We have continued to work on overall course clean up and details. Last week, we tackled the ponds near #12 East and #6 West. This was a lot of work as they had gotten overgrown and we were removing what we cut down from the area. I think the work will be noticeable.

It seems like a few of you are out enjoying this beautiful Sunday. Hopefully you enjoy your day!

Pics of the pond clean up below ...

Another one ...

Looks like a great stretch of weather coming! In preparation for that, we blew out all the green side bunkers on the West course yesterday. We also mulched the areas around the bunkers that had the most leaves. Today we are going to reset cups, check tee markers, and hopefully rake green side bunkers on the West if they aren't frozen.

We took a big tree down from between eight and nine East this week. Had obviously been dead for sometime and was in pretty bad shape. We completed the clean up other than the stump grinding.

Hopefully you can get out and enjoy the course over the next week!

Pond clean up!

We've had a pretty standard 10 days or so in the agro department. We are on our third mow of the high grass areas, which I'm really happy with. I was afraid we would have snow cover or terrible weather for weeks or a month and not much make progress. However we have had a good winter of working weather and we have accomplished a lot.

The last few days we knocked out the pond edge next to the tee on #1 West and behind the wedding area. This area is very visible and had gotten out of control. No longer! Still some work to do around the edge, as some of those small bushes and trees are frozen into the ice. But overall, a much cleaner, neater look.

One to two inches of rain today! Not great for the turf. When we thaw out after a few very cold days like we had early this week, things are sloppy. When we thaw out and get an inch or two of rain, things are very sloppy and easily damaged. 

Have a good weekend!

Pictures of the pond, before top, after bottom. Notice in the first picture, you can't even see most of the split rail fence "before". 

Five more!

Five more ... the number of additional touchdowns the Chiefs would have probably scored if their game against the Texans was a quarter longer. Fortunately for Bill O'Brien and all seven Texans fans, they only had to sit through the normal four quarters. Three of which did not go their way.

"Five more" is also the number of additional trees removed from the east side of the green on #18 West last week as we continue to tackle the shade issues there. This makes 13 trees total out of this area. The big oak tree that resided up against the cart path was removed. It had split almost all the way down the tree, probably from a lightning strike ( pictures below ). We tasked that out to the professionals at Princeton Tree Care. I'm glad it is on the ground. Since we had noticed the split that tree was making me nervous. Two more medium cedars and two smaller oaks were also removed. Those we did in-house. We did all the stump grinding in-house also.

I'm happy with what we have accomplished here. It will no doubt help that green complex. There are four more trees I'd like to do, but all four may be outside what I'm comfortable attempting in-house. There are professional tree care companies for a reason.

Refer back to our first post about this area if you haven't already ...

Some USGA articles about shade:

USGA: Casting Shade
USGA: Shade + Traffic = Dirt
USGA: Let There Be Light
USGA: Light The Way To Healthy Putting Greens

Picture of #18 area before ...

Screenshot of phone app showing sun position ... 

Picture after first set of trees were removed ... 

Picture after last weeks removals .. 

Big oak tree cracked ...

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 ...