Aeration and rain

We had every intention of this week’s blog focusing solely on aeration. However, in addition to that, we must now also make a note regarding the rain we have had over the last week.

Disease on 8 green. Notice the brown, water
soaked areas. This is the infected turf.

From July 15^th thru July 27^th we received 11.62” of rain, with 10.8” coming in less than a week. That is nearly a foot of rain over a 12-day period. We discussed some of the issues we faced, particularly at the soccer field, last week. However, once the rain finally stopped, the temperature ramped back up. This presented a perfect scenario for disease. Hot temperatures, wet soil, and humid, calm air are the ingredients needed for a disease called Pythium blight. We were aware the conditions were coming and we made a preventive chemical application the day of the worst circumstances. We used a chemical that is labeled for one disease only: Pythium blight. Not even 10 hours after the application, the conditions were so ripe, the disease developed anyway, breaking right through our chemical barrier in 3 localized spots. We then made a very targeted rescue application to those areas: the back of 8 green, the front of 9 green, and the far-right side of 17 green. This rescue application stopped the progression of the disease, but the damage was done. Luckily, we are headed straight into aeration, which is a great time for healing.

Disease area on 9 collar and green

Another angle of 9 collar and green

Starting today, we will be aerating greens, tees, approaches, and fairways. The weather does not look great so we will be accelerating our schedule from past years. We will start with the putting green and front 9 greens. The front 9 will be closed all day, with the back 9 open for play. Those will be the only greens we do Monday. Weather permitting, we will do the chipping green and back 9 greens on Tuesday, with the front 9 open for play. The schedule change is in regards to fairway aeration. We will contract out the work as usual and we will start on the front 9, going in order. However, in years past, we would have stopped after #9 and saved the rest for the next day. But, with the possibility of incoming storms we are going to push to finish all of the fairways in one day. So, the tractors will continue on to #10, etc. and work all day. Please do not attempt to play the hole on which the tractors are working; just skip that hole and move on to the next. We do not want the workers to be in danger of being hit, nor do we want to waste time with them waiting for golfers.

We will be using solid tines on the tees, approaches, and fairways. There will be no material removed from the ground, only a hole punched into it. This technique works well when the ground is somewhat saturated (which ours is), when you don’t want to remove material from turf that is trying to heal (like ours has been all year), or when you want to speed up the process (which we do). We will also be making our annual summer compost application, which has been an important addition to our routine.

We will do our best to minimize the impact to golfers during aeration, but we are also battling mother nature. Aeration is a very important practice, and we are going to push hard for completion as quickly as possible.

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please be aware and careful of new sod.

Also, as part of a Golf Committee initiative to improve course etiquette, we have included links to videos teaching proper on course etiquette. Please take a moment to watch:

Ball Marks - How to properly repair

Bunker etiquette

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org

Update and rain

We were able to complete the slicing just ahead of the recent rain, which was perfect. Keeping the Bermuda grass hydrated will enable it to heal quickly and effectively.

We received a few rain events leading into the weekend. But nothing like the storm that sat over top of us on Saturday. The club totaled 5.5” of rain in about 18 hours. The best part was seeing how the investment in drainage really has paid off. While several drains were still draining the next morning, the fact that the water is draining is significant.

We had very little damage to the course, mostly just mulch and debris from over-flowing ponds and moving water. Some sticks were also blown down with the wind. However, the most attention will be paid to the Bermuda soccer field. We have been working on repairing the damage to the field from the winter. We laid ½ an acre of sod at the same time as the work on the golf course and we were finally able to open the field for the first time all season on Saturday, and then Mother Nature happened. The creek that passes by the field overtook its bank and littered the field with sand, gravel, limbs, stumps, and other debris.

We completed this post Sunday afternoon, to be posted Monday morning. Then we received another inch of rain Sunday afternoon, evening and early Monday morning, so we had to make another update. Judging by the forecast, the totals are not finished yet.

While there is no permanent damage, or costly repairs needed, it will take some labor to remove all of the debris off the field. Another reminder that we must deal with whatever nature sends our way.

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please be aware and careful of new sod.

Also, as part of a Golf Committee initiative to improve course etiquette, we have included links to videos teaching proper on course etiquette. Please take a moment to watch:

Ball Marks - How to properly repair

Bunker etiquette

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org

Another round of slicing

This week we will start slicing the Bermuda grass. It is one of the cultural practices that we do regularly, including once already this year in May. Normally, come summer time, we switch to more aggressive verticutting. However, since this season has been focused on recovery we are erring on the side of caution.

Up-close view of material removed from verticutting

Verticutting the fairway is a lot like it sounds. Instead of the blades laying horizontal across the grass and cutting it, the blades dive vertically down into the canopy of the grass. The blades reach down and remove material up to ½” below the surface. This material, thatch, is deposited on the surface and blown off. Thatch can be a detriment to the health of the turf and it can reduce the playability of the fairways. Also, the cutting of the below-ground tissue can stimulate new growth in healthy Bermuda grass. But we have spent the better part of 2 months to get as much healthy turf as we can established on the fairways. We feel that removing material is counter-productive and may adversely affect our previous efforts.

Another view of verticutting

But, we do want to stimulate the new growth. So instead of verticutting, over the next two weeks we will be slicing  instead. Slicing is the very tame alternative to verticutting. Blades still reach down into the canopy of the turf, but do not remove any material. Below-ground tissue is still cut and oxygen is still given an avenue into the rootzone. It will be a much cleaner and less labor-intensive project as well, and come this time of year, we can use labor in other areas to get us through the toughest stretches. As mentioned, verticutting also removes thatch, which can be a problem for turfgrass, if left unchecked. However, we don’t currently have a thatch problem, nor are we trying to recover from a past thatch problem. Also, a thatch issue won’t develop in one season from skipping the more aggressive cultural practice.

Much less disruption from slicing

We still have a few more plans to continue to aid the Bermuda grass in recovering from the devastating winter and spring. Slicing is one such step in that process.

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please be aware and careful of new sod.

Also, as part of a Golf Committee initiative to improve course etiquette, we have included links to videos teaching proper on course etiquette. Please take a moment to watch:

Ball Marks - How to properly repair

Bunker etiquette

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org

Bermuda grass plugging

At some point we hope to publish a blog that is not related to Bermuda grass and its recovery, but not yet. Sod work is complete, sprigging is about to commence again, and Mother Nature has finally realized what time of year it is. We have also tried to salvage every ounce of healthy turf we can from the golf course by doing some sod work ourselves.

The sod squares we saved at the shop.
This is about 2/3 of what we ultimately saved.

We have been plugging small sod pieces into #5 fairway since late spring. We have done it in years past also, which you can read about here and here. We haven’t completed #5 fairway yet, but we paused in that location to work in other places, notably, small areas in approaches.

A sod piece placed back into an approach.

When we were outlining the areas to be replaced by new sod, it would have been inefficient to circle every tiny last place that was not healing well. Not only is it difficult for the sod crew to work many small areas, but a lot of healthy turf would have become collateral damage in the demolition stage. Instead of this scenario, we elected to focus on the large, poor areas, knowing we could come back and patch the small ones. Starting last week, that is exactly what we have done.

More sod pieces in an approach.

First, we went out ahead of the contracted sod crew and spared as much healthy turf as we could from areas that were going to be removed. No winter kill patch is perfectly square, the death weaved in and out and around at random. But the new sod is square, so at some point healthy turf would have to be removed along the edges of bad areas. That is the turf we targeted. We quickly scooped it up and saved it back at our shop. Once the major sod work was complete, we went back out to the approaches and began inserting our salvaged pieces back into the small dead areas, with the goal of making the approaches as blemish free as possible. We will wrap up the project this week and start back down #5 fairway at that point.

10 days after sod pieces were transplanted back
into the approach. You can just make out the
rectangular shape in the center of the picture.

Keeping every inch of healthy turf helps. Any Bermuda grass that survived last winter is strong and healthy enough to survive most winter and we are using it in whatever capacity possible.

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please be aware and careful of new sod.

Also, as part of a Golf Committee initiative to improve course etiquette, we have included links to videos teaching proper on course etiquette. Please take a moment to watch:

Ball Marks - How to properly repair

Bunker etiquette

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org

Sod wrap-up

Sod work will conclude Tuesday. We set out priorities to complete at the beginning of the project and we completed those, plus more, while staying under the proposed budget.

When we set out to plan for the sod project in early May, we had to quantify the amount of sod we would need in order to establish a budget. After walking the entire golf course and measuring every single damaged area, we estimated that we had 10 acres of damaged turf. We realized that it was not financially feasible to sod completely, thus, we prioritized accordingly:

1                          All necessary areas on holes 1, 10, and 18, which included tees, fairway spots and approaches.

2                          All necessary tee boxes on all other holes.

3                          All necessary approaches on all other holes.

By our calculations, this would be approximately 4 acres of sod, which is about 17 truckloads, and it would provide healthy turf in highly visible areas, and significant in-play areas.

The natural healing that occurred from the time we first measured the damage, to when we actually sodded, greatly reduced the necessary repairs. By the time we finished those three priorities, we had only used 11.5 truckloads. Our focus shifted to the Bermuda grass soccer field next. We will ultimately use 2 full truckloads on soccer, half of the final load will be laid on Monday. This still left us 3.5 trucks under our initial budget total of 17 truckloads, plus we had completed the repair on the soccer field which was not an initial priority.

Now, we have made the decision to take the second half of the load from soccer, plus one more complete truck and complete another area on the golf course. We will finish the two large, bad areas on #15 fairway and then take all remaining sod to #5 fairway and repair as much as possible. In total, we will have used 15 truckloads, worked on 3 areas past our initial priority list, and spent under our total budget.

As of today, all tee sod is open, and tee markers are back in their regular areas. Some of the approach sod that was laid most recently is still to tender too fully open, but our goal is to have that sod open by Saturday.

From here, we will start another round of sprigging, which has been effective. We will also start seeding. Both of these next steps will be in progress over the next month, as we have time, while continuing to maintain the rest of the property. Have a good 4^th of July.

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

Please be aware and careful of new sod.

Also, as part of a Golf Committee initiative to improve course etiquette, we have included links to videos teaching proper on course etiquette. Please take a moment to watch:

Ball Marks - How to properly repair

Bunker etiquette

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org