Cold morning!

The air temperature this morning got down to a chilly 20 degrees! Temps that low can sometimes be dangerous to our greens. However, most of our surface area is still covered in snow and ice and the small areas that were exposed have plenty of soil moisture to prevent the soil temperatures from dropping very quickly.
This morning at 8:00 am the soil temperature of the exposed greens was 31.5 to 32 degrees.

Winter storm 2012

The storm dumped 9 to 10 inches of SNOW on the course! And it was beautiful! However, we do have some tree damage. Most of the damage is minor and mostly out of play, but there is a lot of it.
Once the course has melted and dried some I will be asking for some help in cleaning up. BUT it will be about a week (or more) before the course can handle equipment or cart traffic. Once it is dry enough that we do not track/trench the course I will call for volunteers. Thank you and I hope everyone has a great holiday.
Here are a few pictures of how pretty the course is!

Snow/ice

The storm that is currently moving though is not a real threat to the uncovered greens. In fact a cover of snow or ice will be as good protection from the cold as our covers. If we do not have a blanket of frozen precipitation we will likely cover Wednesday.

Watching the weater!

The current forecast for Wednesday night has me preparing to cover the greens Wednesday. Although, mother nature might take care of that for us on Tuesday night! A cover of snow or ice on the greens will just as good as our covers! I hope everyone has a great Christmas!

Almost winter

A couple of shots after Mowing the fairways. We will not mow again until at least Feb. and then only if we need to clean then up.

Some tree work

We are working on hanging and broken limbs today.

BALL MARKS!

Please make sure to repair your ball marks and maybe one or two more each time you play golf.  Thank you! During this time of year it is even more importantto repair these! Thanks again.

Cart Path Only

Just a reminder that we have gone to Cart Path Only.  This will remain in effect until Spring. 

Painting the Greens Today

We stated this morning and hope to finish by Thursday afternoon. If we need to though we will finish up Friday morning.

Looking good so far.

 Clint painting #1 this morning.

Painting the Greens

I had planned on painting the greens today and tomorrow; however, with the dampness today and the good chance of rain tonight and tomorrow I have pushed it back until Wednesday and Thursday (and Friday if needed.) While painting we will have to close two holes at a time, the green we are painting and the green the previous green. This will give the paint enough dry time so it will not leave foot prints.
I apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

We paint the greens for a couple reasons, first and foremost, it looks great! Our paint job really has a natural look that gives the golfer a brilliant target to shoot at from the fairway.
Secondly, the dark color helps attract sunlight and in turn helps to warm the surface and the soil.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Day! Here is the beautiful view I had this morning on 12!

Frost damage.

These tracks are across 18 green. Not only did someone drive a cart across the green, they apparently did it while frost was present. Fortunately this damage is aesthetic only, once the green goes completely dormant it should not be visible.  But, we are lucky, if it was a heavy frost the damage could have been more severe.

Starting Monday Cart Path Only on 11 and 16

Once again we are having to go Cart Path Only on 11 and 16.  These persistently weak fairways just cannot stand up to traffic like the other fairways. And now that the turf is not growing and cannot "fight back" we need to preserve the existing turf through for the winter months. We will be able to drive 90 degrees through the weekend and will go Path only starting Monday. Thank you for your understanding.

Winter Preparations

We are and have been in winter preparation for the last week or two. We have pre-emerged the course and have been getting the greens ready for winter.

It is critical that the height of cut be raised in the fall to allow for root and canopy development. As the temperatures begin to fall, (soil temps in 70’s), we begin stepping-up the height of cut in small increments to arrive at 3/16” (0.187”) by the time of the first frost. We rarely get our mowers to that height before the turf stops growing. As the temperatures fall the turf grows slower which help to maintain a good green speed.

The objectives of raising the height are 1) to increase canopy density so that it holds up to traffic during the months of no-growth, 2) to decrease firmness somewhat so that ball roll speed does not become excessively fast in winter and 3) to store more carbohydrate reserves to be used when breaking dormancy in spring. (Proper fertility is a critical part of this process)

The process of canopy development and carbohydrate storage cannot occur in the absence of adequate nitrogen. It is imperative that the grass receive enough nitrogen to “fatten up” for winter. Since out turf is already healthy and growing we have been able to use lower rates of nitrogen for winter prep. It is also important to apply applications of potassium in the fall. We have already made the proper applications and will follow up as needed. In conjunction with our potassium application we applied a pre-emerge chemical. This will help prevent the germination of winter weeds in the greens.

It is important to apply a fungicide in the fall to prevent Spring Dead Spot (SDS) disease in the spring. Literature indicates that colonization and infection of Bermuda grass roots by the pathogens that cause SDS (O. korrea and O. herpotricha

are, if you are interested) are most likely to occur when soil temperatures range from 50 -77 F, with maximum injury occurring around 60-65 It is recommended that fungicide be applied when soils temps are starting to cool down and reach an average of 74-77 degrees F. We made the application this morning.

I hope this helps everyone understand a little of what goes on to protect the course during the winter months. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Tuesday

Today we are applying pre-emerge to the greens. This application should prevent the growth of  Po Annua (POA), also known as annual bluegrass. This is the first time we have used pre-emerge on the new greens, but since we had more Poa than usual last year I figured we woud take a more aggresive stance. Here is Clint applying the chemical on #10

#9 looking pretty good!

We still have alittle catch up left to do from Isaac but all in all I think the Course looks real good right now!

Isaac

A quick update after the first day/night of the storm, all is fine.
We have the expected amount of small debris and one larger limb down on the back nine. Other than that the course is good. About 2.5 inches of rain really helped us. Only a few bunkers washed so it never really came down too hard for too long. We still have some storm bands that might hit us later, and today will be windy so more limbs will surly come down. But all in all we are good so far.!

2nd Aerification of 2012

We finished our 2nd aerification Tuesday. This particular time we used a slightly different procedure. Instead of core aerifying (pulling plugs) we simply vented (poked holes) the greens.
We decided to make this change since the current growing conditions are not great. I was afraid that we would not have perfect greens for the Club Championship just on the 17th. This form of aerifying is not as beneficial as pulling pulling cores but it is still effective in temporarily relieving compaction and promoting water and air movement through the soil.
We did verticut aggressively. This will really help with combat thatch build up and will greatly reduce the grain.

Here are a few pictures of the process.

before and after verticut (before is on the right)

Amount of grass removed while verticutting #1 green.

Aerifying

Topdressing

Greens Speeds at the Classic

The offical green speed measurements for the first two rounds are 12.5 using USGA Stimp meter.

Mearsurments were taken bothdays at 9:00am on 17 green. They were very consistent from day to day. Although, I would expect the greens to speed up a little more today due to the warmer, dryer air.
I anticipate the speeds being very close to the same tomorrow.

MAUMELLE CLASSIC COURSE PREPARATIONS

It takes a couple of weeks of preparations to have the Course ready for a tournament like the Maumelle Classic. However, the morning preparations  during the actual tournament is some of the most important action!
We utilize every member of our crew, most of them on the greens.
Here are pictures of most of the jobs that we accomplish in front of the golfers.

 Clint Sellers our New Assistant Superintendent Changes Cups early morning before play.

 We use 4 crew members to walk mow all greens prior to play. In the foreground is Edgar on 11 and in the distance is Oscar on 15.

 Jose is our fith greens mower. He mows every green again after the walk mowers to  smooth the surface another time and clip a little more leaf blade.

 Alfredo then Rolls the geens with the roller. This is the final step in preping the grens. They are now perfect!.

 We mow every fairway in front of play. Here is Oscar on 7.

 Cande mowing fairways on 6.

 Tanner and Tayler have finished walk mowing their greens , they then checked greens one last time and blew any leaves or pine straw that may have  fallen onto the greens.

Lorenzo rakes every bunker. He is on early moring!

Fertilizer!

Today we fertilzed the entire course (geen settings, fairways, and tee settings and roughs boardering fairways). We used 7450 lbs of fertilizer and covered 54 acres.

90 Degree Rule !

As of this morning we can once again follow the 90 degree cart rule. Please be aware of were you are driving and please do not drive over or through any roped off areas. Thank you.

Heat/Drought/TurfGrass

During this extended period of heat and drought our turf is suffering a bit. Even warm season turf like our Bermuda fairways can be effect by severe heat. After extended period of  heat the turf firs slows down growing and then begins to go dormant. Because dry turf surfers quicker than moist turf we water every night.  In fact for the last couple of weeks I have run every head on the course, every night, for the maximum time. Our irrigation has never been very good. The biggest problem is its spacing and layout. We have very very little irrigation in any roughs on the course. So, although we still have plenty of water and I am using our system to it's maximum potential we are still falling behind. We are running water on hot spots through out the morning and occasionally in the after noon when absolutely necessary. (Running water in the105 degree heat is not real effective or efficient) We are doing everything possible, including spraying a Wetting Agent on the fairways(a chemical that helps the soil maintain moisture longer.) This is not cheap but after last year I invested in the chemical just incase. Good thing.

As of now we have plenty of water, which has allowed me to not yet cut back on the watering. I have been running our transfer pump from 13 for several weeks now to stay ahead. SO FAR we have been able too. Although evaporation is so rapid, we are losing water everyday.

So, even with running all the water we are running, much of our turf is still suffering, if this continues we will have to Go Cart Path Only to help save our fairways.  I hope the wetting Agent and our watering practices prolong that decision but I'm afraid it is inevitable, if the forecast holds. I will keep you posted.

Our transfer pump pumping water into th pond on two!

Fairy Ring

As everyone has seen, we have several areas of Fairy Ring on many of our greens. Fair Ring is primarily an aesthetic problem, however if left unchecked it can damage the turf. We have been treating each area as it arises with the traditional method of spot spraying it with a fungicide and watering it in with using a wetting agent. This has been working pretty well, but with growing conditions at a peak the turf is growing through its nutrition (fertilizer) quickly and new rings has been popping up. Not to worry, I have been tweaking our fertility and using some other treatments trying to stay on top of the Rings. The pathogen that causes the Rings is always in the soil, we only see the symptoms when conditions are right, or should I say slightly off?
Again, for the most part the rings pose little more than aesthetic problems, unless neglected.

Here are some pictures of three different rings in different stages.

Here is a fresh ring that was treated today.

Below is an older ring that was treated late last week and begining to heal.

Below is a ring that was treated earlier last week and is nearly gone.

Aerified!

We finished aerifying Greens Late Tuesday. Greens will take about 10 days to be 100% , but they are playable now.

Here are some pictures of the process. In order of completion.

Jose Verticutting

Cande Mowing

Alfredo Topdressing

Austin Spreading Organic fertilizer

Me and Lorenzo Aerifying

Me dragging pluggs to break them up.

Crew blowing of debris.

Alfredo/Austin/andEdgar took turns brushing in sand.

Alfredo spreading 13-2-13 fertilizer.

We then water heavy and Roll in the morning. We will begin mowing Thursday or Friday and by the end of next week we will be at our original hieght of cut.

This accident happened after we were finished aerifying. Machine and trailer are ok. Oscar however suffered a minor injury on his foot. He is fine and will be back to work in a few days.

Aerifying

We are aerifying Greens this Monday and Tuesday. Actually we will begin verticutting the Greens late Sunday evening. Austin will start on number 1 at 5:15 pm. If you want to play after that please start two greens ahead of him. Thank you.

The entire course will be closed Monday so we can complete as many holes as possible. The plan is to have the front side open Tuesday morning, and possibly the back nine open late Tuesday afternoon. Hopefully around 4:00pm. However, we will not open the back until everything is done, so please check with the pro shop before heading to the back.

Wednesday and Thursday we will be aerifying Fairways. In order to keep this process moving along we may have to close a hole or two at a time. I am sorry for the inconvenience but we have to keep moving in order to complete this project in a reasonable amount of time, not to mention keeping my crew safe!. Thank you for your understanding.

Thank you!

5.23.12

 

Maumelle Country Club Members,

 

I wanted to inform everyone that I have had a member step forward and volunteer to help this weekend. Mr. Hearnes will be helping us with morning course preparations during the 4-Ball.

 

Thank you in advance Mr. Hearnes!

 

A little further information for those who may be interested. The reason I felt in necessary to ask for help was an employee cut ties with us Tuesday early morning leaving me short handed considering we have a full course shotgun at 8:00am and we are trying to have the course in perfect condition. I am in the process of finding someone else and I hope to have someone in place next week.

Verticut Greens

Tuesday we verticut our greens first time this season. We verticut every other week during the growing season. Theses Maintenance cuts are not very aggressive but they help us control the grain and the build up of thatch. We set the verticutter to cut at 1/16 of an inch deep and cut each line twice. This time our direction was due East and West. We change directions each time to maximize grain control.
In june when we aerify we will set the verticutter at a dept of 1/8 of an inch.

Our by-weekly verticut has very little negative affect on ball roll.

Austin Verticutting nursery green.

                                                                 After verticuting

After mowing!