Checking In

Just a brief course condition update.  I wanted to do this before the possible rain/snow event predicted on the 17th arrives.



I trucked my way through 2.5 feet of snow and as experience has taught me, there is NO ice on the surface of our nursery green today.  If I had my snowshoes I would have reported on the condition of a few of the greens most severely impacted by winter kill over the past decade. 

I know you are as tired of winter as I. This brutal winter will go down as one of the coldest on record, and as of today, the fourth coldest on record.  The coldest winter recorded was the winter of 76/77 when it seemed night time lows always topped a minus 25 degree's! So what do we have to complain about with our lows dipping to a balmy minus 14 degrees?  I remember that winter well as that was the year I had removed my alternator from my car, a 65 Dodge Polara (I was going to replace it the next morning after the auto parts store opened) and found my car missing.  The State Patrol later called me to tell me they had found it abandoned on the Interstate 94 in Waukesha.  Without an alternator, the battery ran dead and the thief had to walk or hitch their way to Milwaukee!  Without a fan belt the engine overheated and seized up.  It was twenty five below that night.  I hope the weather kicked whomever stole it in the ass just a little bit.

I'm not a glutton for punishment but this winter has been perfect and the type I would like to see every winter!  To date we haven't seen not one of those December or January thunderstorm events that drop over inch of precipitation over the course or the extended warming spells that melt and cause water to runoff, only to refreeze creating ice rinks everywhere. Knock on wood. 

Yes there will be ice formation on top of our greens due to snow melt, but this ice will be short lived.  Soil temperatures at the two inch depth are holding steady under our snow cover at 30 degrees, the benefit of the snows insulating factor.  There isn't a lot of moisture in the snow as the majority of our snow events were of the "clipper" variety of dry powder.  So once it starts to melt it should melt quickly.  We are just at the halfway point in February.  The sun is feeling a little warmer and the days are a little longer and I'm thinking I need a new set of clubs!  _Mk

Brrrr,,,,,Chilly,,,,,,CA_Ca_ca_Cold!!!!!

If you live in the northern tier of states you know it has been awfully cold the last couple of days.   In fact I " frost burned" the index finger of my left hand when I grabbed the security gate lock with my bare hand for less than a second on a recent sub zero morning.  (I typically use the heat from my hands to thaw the lock to unlock it.)  Big mistake.

While the temperature pictured above shows a minus 21 degrees, the temperatures outside are no where close to the record lows. It would have to be a full ten degrees colder before any records are set.  The coldest temperature recorded by our weather station was a minus 23.8 degrees. Soil temperatures under an 8 inch snow blanket are 27 degrees.  This is five degrees colder than last year when soil temperatures held at freezing.   The nice part of being cold is we haven't had the December Thunderstorms that turn our putting greens into ice skating rinks.  I've got my fingers crossed that we won't have any either.  It would be nice to start the year out without winter kill for a change.

 Schools have been closed due to incredible wind chills close to minus 50 degrees.  Bitterly cold winds blasting down a vent stack in my house was cold enough to freeze up the hot water pipe to my upstairs bathroom sink.  Instead of watching the Florida State vs. Auburn football game, I was busy tearing the ceiling from my garage to get some warmth to those pipes.  Thankfully I was able to thaw the pipe before it could burst.  I did have a mess to cleanup as the running water did fill the sink past capacity.  A sixth sense told me to check to see if I was making any progress.  I caught the water just before reaching the hallway carpet. The photo above shows 16 inch overhang of snow cascading off the roof.

I was going to caption this photo "cold storage" but for some reason this photo reminded me of all the unfortunate "homeless" seeking shelter and relief from the bitter cold.  Stay warm.  _Mk

The Big Green "X" = Timber!

Felling the largest Oak west of #17 cart path.  This video is lengthy so once the tree is on the ground you can stop play.  (We are just learning how to play with video's on our smart phones. Very cool don't you think?) We used a cable to "pull" the tree between a living oak.  Unfortunately, the Oak Wilt fungus is present in this area and will continue to move unabated.  We removed five large Oaks in 2012 and six more were cut down this year and anticipate many more in the next few years. Our efforts to keep high value specimens alive through fungicidal injections and root pruning barriers never resulted in saving trees.

 

Felling dead Oaks North of #18 fairway.  A tree consultant commented to me that you have to remove every oak in every direction from the base of the dead tree as it is tall to stop the spread of the disease.  In other words if the dead oak is 80 feet tall every Oak in side that radius is doomed and needs to come down to stop the disease from spreading 

 

It's too bad as these trees were hundreds of years old and present at the time my ancestors set foot on some rock in Plymouth MA in the Seventeen Hundreds.

1200 Sq Ft Addition

Starting the 27th of October number 14 green was ripped up to enlarge it.  Below is a photo essay of that work.

#14 green was designed by Stiles & Van Kleek; a Boston Massachusetts architectural firm in 1922 and was constructed by the Leonard McComber construction company from Chicago Illinois.  The green painted line in the picture above is the foot print of the new green.

 
Sod was stripped from the approach and saved to repair weak collars found on other greens through out the course.  Bentgrass sod never did match up with the Poa laced sod that it replaced.  This sod would match the older turf perfectly.

Sod from the putting green and surrounds was striped and saved in our spoil piles.

Ready for rebuilding.

The former approach was hollowed out and the cavity backfilled with greens mix.

History Lesson:  The original green was constructed by capping the sand base fill with 6-12" of black topsoil (to hold moisture.)  The top 4 inches of sand is the result of thirty plus years this green has been topdressed with sand. The white column of sand in the center of was the result of deep tine aeration hole backfilled with sand and provided internal drainage during stressful summers.

This layer had to be removed from the existing putting surface as it greatly impeded drainage.  It peeled up in thick slabs.  If you look closely, you can see the pores punched through this hard pan by the deep tine aerifier.  This is the principle reason I always valued deep tinning more as a tool for drainage.

We first used our back hoe to mix the black soil with the sandy subsoil but this method proved too slow.

Ultimately, we used our front end loader to peel, chop, mix and bury this layer.  A good old fashioned deep rototilling operation would have blended the two soils better.

The new surface being "floated in.  Without GPS, Scott tried to retain some of the unique features of the old putting green surface.

While we were at it, the bunker was moved to create a wider footpath and the ugly built-up lip of sand was removed.

Sod harvested from Lawsonia Golf Course in Green Lake was unrolled.  It took us two days to complete the sod laying due to travel times and intensive labor involved in cutting, rolling and stacking of sod.  We simply ran out of day light.  Original plans to use large roll sod and machinery to lay it fell apart when the nursery became "sold out" due to other projects in the area.

We completed approximately 70% of the green on day one.  It looks good from a distance.

The seems are being topdressed as it is impossible to match the edges perfectly.

When will this green be ready for play?  Good question and unknown at this time as we will need to aerify and topdress this green multiple times in an effort to "level it" enough for greens height of cut mowing let alone play.  It will remain bumpy for sometime until a new topdressing layer is built up to smooth the surface out.  While not ideal, this new addition is an improvement to the ever present condition of a green that has struggled during times of super summer stress.  _Mk

Waiting for the leaves to fall.

An opportunity to add sprinkler heads to a pair of tee's at the Tri City was the order of the day.  Sprinkler heads were salvaged from a course undergoing renovation and the pipe and fittings were in inventory.

The back half of this tee was always dry and especially noticeable during this years drought.  The weather men in Wausau mentioned they had 2.4 inches of rain last month and give or take 1.2" below normal.  At Bull's Eye some 45 miles to the south as the crow flies received a paltry 1.5" of precipitation for the month.

And as long as we had the rented trencher in our hands we took this opportunity to do some badly needed "root pruning."  Surface feeder roots of trees began invading tee box surfaces robbing the turf of moisture and nutrient.  Similar work is badly needed along fairways and is the principle reason a root pruning machine remains on my top ten "needs" list.

Severed roots.  Trees and turf make uncomfortable bedfellows.

Notice how dry the soil is.

After the trench has been backfilled and seeded.  There will be some settling of the soil that will be addressed sometime down the road.

_Mk

Back in Play

It's been since June and the first day of fall is upon us that we finally was able to install and activate the decorative fountain in #8 pond.  When we first installed it in early June (it was not needed due to all the rains we received) the electrical connection on the power wire lead needed to be replaced.  Once this repair was completed by us in house, the fountain failed to work when powered on.  It was sent to the factory for inspection and repairs were it was determined the "upper unit" failed but the motor was in good working order.  We are fortunate that repair parts were available as this unit is an antique and no longer made.

Gunch Removal Progress update:

You will notice we cleaned the entire woods line between #14 and #17 fairways.  Once  we got started it just didn't look right any place we tried to terminate.  It is our plans to clean up the area left of #16 ladies tee and the overgrown mess of pines to the east of that same tee box.  These projects have been on my to do list too long.

Taking advantage of the warm weather and bonus seed available for our use, we inter-seeded weak (due to shade and tree root competition) bunker banks.  These were aerified first to remediate compacted soils caused by golf cart and maintenance equipment.  Please consider all roped off areas as "Ground Under Repair" and take a free drop at the closest point of relief.

Where Credits Due

On one of the only cool day of the past week your grounds crew set out to improve the air circulation around the struggling fourteenth green by removing the "gunch" and liming up low hanging branches as far as we could reach. The guys, curious to the nature of the word "gunch," tried looking the word up in the dictionary and could not find it but did find it listed as a term used in golf.

 It appears to be working.  The air was always still and hot as a sauna.  The alternative would have meant installing expensive fans that aren't cheap to run.  (BTW, we intend to remove several trees later this fall after the course is closed in order to improve the levels of light reaching the ground.)

To stay out of the hot sun a couple of your grounds crew replaced the brick pads near the main entrance of the club house.  The side pictured below was tricky to install as the sidewalks and curbing rose or fell in three different directions.

I think it looks nice and does dress the area up and it is safer by far to walk on.

Recently I was asked what the big green X's stood for marking several trees around the course.  Want the answer?  Look to the heavens.

The tree is dead.  It is much easier to locate and remove the dead from the stand after the leaves have fallen from the living. _Mk