And it keeps getting wetter

Another .5" last night brought us to 2.8" in the last 12 days.  Yes we are wet, but what a great time of year to get the wet spell over with, the temperatures haven't been great for playing anyway.  The other great news is that during this wet spell we aerified green and fairways, getting that out of the way for the year. 

When you can't get out on the turf because it's too wet - you can always play in the sand. 

 Yesterday we spent the day edging the bunkers; today we pulled weeds, picked out rocks, smoothed out edges and gave them the first rake of the year.

We cleaned out all the bunkers and the rakes are out, they are ready for the season.  

A little rain delay

We saw 1.5" of rain over the last 48 hours.  The rain this morning didn't allow us to get out on the course to perform maintenance, we tackled other projects around the shop before being able to get back out. 

Rob and Dan B. power washed all the equipment.

Evan and Jim are basically rebuilding the back end of the rough mower.

Wayne and Eric completed a thorough cleaning of our chemical storage.

I love it when I come across a shelf looking like this, thanks Eric!

Careful what you wish for

While we needed rain, we now have more water than we can handle.  With the slow soaking rain from yesterday and another batch of storms moving through over the night, the ground is now saturated in areas that are typically irrigated.  We are currently sitting at 3.05" over the last 5 days and more rain moving through today.

Puddles are prevalent on the fairways.  We were not able to mow the greens today as we were pushing water with every pass. 

With little opportunity to get mowing done, we focused on a few projects.  Here we trimmed back the river bank in front of 9 green. 

The landscaping around the old 10th tee was also removed.  This area will be seeded into rough and make a great location for small tents during events and outings. 

Saturated conditions

With more rain falling this morning, we are now at 3.65" within the last 13 days

We've elected to keep the range closed for a few days due to the soft conditions.  If opened, we would lose a significant number of range balls due to them plugging in the mud.  Thank you for your patience. 

Rain totals

No pictures in this post - you've seen them all already, still squeegeeing and spiking greens.

 

In the last 11 days the course has seen 6.4" of rain.

In the last 50 days the course has seen 17".

The current wet trend started on May 29 and we've had very few breaks since then.  Tomorrow, more rain will add to our totals.

 

With this heat and humidity, disease pressure is really high.  We sprayed all the playing surfaces on Thursday with a preventive application, finishing up at 10:00pm.  I feel confident that we will fair well.  With that said, we will still see some turf loss in low lying areas that hold water.  In those areas the pressure is just too high and the turf will not be able to withstand the added water and heat.

 

We continue to spike greens as needed to bring oxygen into the soil.  We also raised mowing heights to reduce scalping, and decreased rolling to alleviate added pressure.  When the wet trend snaps, we will be back to normal.

 

The latest storm on Friday night made a mess of our bunkers, we will be repairing them on Monday.  There was a scheduled outing on Monday which has been moved to August 10.



You know what this post is about....

As it continues to rain, our focus moves from keeping the course 'playable' to keeping the course 'alive'.  We were supposed to hold the U of F golf outing today, but rescheduled it due to saturated course conditions and a bad weather outlook.  Our main concern are greens 10 and 18, these two greens in particular hold water more than the others.  Currently, they are saturated pools of mush; allowing that amount of foot traffic on them for an outing might be the end of them.

To combat the saturated soils and lack of oxygen, we have been aerifying the greens, especially 10 and 18, on a regular basis.  We have also limited mowing and rolling to reduce stress as much as possible.

A few areas in the fairways have also been aerified.

Squeegeeing the fairways is becoming a daily routine - attempting to clear the water off as soon as possible.  We have been lucky in the sense that we have not had a lot of sun and high temperatures.  If we had these rains followed be heat and sun, we would have seen a lot more turf loss.

We are stuck between a rock and a hard place on mowing - if we don't mow today, the next driest day will most likely be Thursday by then the grass will be horrendously long, it already is.  If we mow today we are going to pull up mud and the course is going to look like trash.  So, some areas we mowed, some we didn't.  The rule is: if it's just a mud track, go ahead and mow it; but if you're leaving ruts, don't mow it.  Tracks are temporary, ruts are hard to get out.

 

2.2" of rain

Over the last 36 hours we've seen 2.2" of rain, leaving the course saturated this morning.

View of the range tee first thing this morning.

Bunkers were full.

1 fairway

The rain didn't keep us from doing routine maintenance and some house cleaning.

It gave us a great opportunity to clean out the barn...

and give all the equipment a good scrubbing.

3.2" of rain

We saw rain for 34 straight hours, from 4:00pm Friday until 2:00am Sunday, with only a few short breaks in that span.  In total, the course received 3.2"

The river came out of its banks yet again.

Bunkers were washed out and were repaired today.

Along with the rain, we also saw plenty of wind.  The course is littered with debris, most of which will be picked up tomorrow. 

 

Still raining

1.9" of rain last night and into this morning. 

Choking greens

With all the rain and humidity we've had recently, the greens have started turning an orange color.  When that happens, we know that the turf isn't getting the oxygen it needs.

10 and 18 are usually the worst, they tend to hold water more than the other greens.

When the turf needs oxygen, the best way to remedy this is to aerify.  Today we solid tined all the greens, let them breathe for a few hours, then rolled them smooth for this afternoon's play.  With the extended forecast showing little change, I would expect we will do this again next week. 

Heavy Rains

3.7" of rain fell on the course yesterday and into last night.  Most of the rain came in heavy showers causing a lot of it to runoff.  This allowed the course to remain fairly playable other than the bunkers.  If we had more of a soaking rain, carts would have been restricted due to saturation, but again, most the rain ran off the property and down the drain.  We started repairing bunkers today, but most of the bunker work will have to wait until tomorrow, our day was spent on picking up debris from the storm.

Bunkers were still draining early this morning.

Most of the bunkers are washed out to some degree.

Landscape beds washed out from heavy rains.

A few fairways had to be squeegeed off.

We also had a significant number of branches down.  Most of the day was spent picking up debris.

 

Recent events

Today was a day back to normalcy for the Grounds staff.  The recent week was busy with preparations for the Men's invite and the Ohio Junior Championship.  Then the events came and went, now we get back into more routine schedules and small projects.

I consider the Men's invite, as do most private clubs, as the one week of the summer where we want to showcase our golf course and therefore schedule maintenance to peak during that weekend.  Every detail is attended to prior to the event.  Judging by the remarks from the members and their guests, we hit our mark.  Despite the wet conditions, the course was in fine shape and a gem the members could be proud of.

I have to thank my staff publicly for their efforts.  They performed great leading up to and during the event.  Putting extra hours in when needed and tending to every detail.  I am very appreciative of the pride they are taking in their duties.  Its a good feeling to find two employees edging tee plaques with a scissors without being told - just to give that extra touch.  Well done!

With the closing of the Men's Invite, we led right into the Ohio Junior Championship.  One of these special events is work in itself, two back to back is even more so.  Add in the wet conditions and we had some challenging situations.  During the Championship we had multiple rain delays, and many times that the squeegees came out.  With the first round being cut short due to storms we had to cram the end of the first round and the entire second round into the day on Wednesday.  This required a full shotgun start at 7:30 am to give them enough time to finish the tournament.  To prepare the entire course for play by 7:30 meant a 4:30 start time for the crew.  Again, thank you guys for your hard work and getting it done.

Those of you who attended the annual meeting may remember that Grounds staff member Wayne Bartchlett was recognized for his 42 years of service.  I had made the comment that no one beats Wayne to work, he is here early opening the building and drinking his coffee.  I got to work at 3:45 am on Wednesday morning thinking I would beat Wayne there.  Well - I didn't, the building was open, lights were on and Wayne was drinking his coffee.

We aren't exactly set up for maintenance in the dark.  Tuesday night I took a trip to Lowes and purchased enough flashlights for everyone, including the OGA Officials.  Two Officials came in at 4:30 to help us out.  When play was suspended on Tuesday, the players had to mark their ball.  These markers had to be lifted to allow for mowing and then placed back down.  The OGA was very helpful in doing this for us, allowing for the greens to get mowed and rolled.

In the end the event was concluded at 9:00pm on Wednesday.  The players, parents and OGA were very appreciative of FCC and everyone's hard work - all departments.

 

Weekend weather

This past weekend brought the course 3.75" of rain.  The course did well with the brunt of the rain over Friday night - we were able to allow carts on Saturday morning.  But with the continued light rain on Saturday and Sunday, the soil became saturated and it is now very wet.  From what I count on the calender, this is the 5th time that this has happened this year - major rain events bringing 2"+ in one shot.  I don't recall this happening at all last year, I don't think we had to fix our bunkers once, now it is a monthly occurrence. 

This is a 1' high pile of grass clippings over a drain in the fairway.  This tells me there was a lot of rain that came really fast.

Monday morning we had a few puddles lingering in the fairways.

Our bunkers washed out again.

We spent time cleaning them out before we could fix them.

The crew did a great job getting them back in shape.

 

 

Last nights rain

Last night we again got hammered with rain - 1.3" coming in a 1/2 hours time.  It seems this summer when they call for .25" with a chance of thunderstorms, we get hit with the heavy stuff.  This morning the course is a little soggy, but carts are still out.

Range tee last night

Chipping fairway

15 fairway

13 fairway

Most of our bunkers washed out with the heavy downpour

Luck would have it - we are currently demoing a new bunker rake for a potential future purchase.  This machine has a plow on the front that made it very effecient placing the sand back in place - cutting our labor on bunker repair to 1/3 for this morning.

 

Recent rains and reseeding

On Saturday morning, the golf course took on another 2.5" of rain.  Yesterday morning, we got .3" and more rain is in the forecast for this afternoon.  I have been searching for the record rainfall in a 30 day period in Findlay - if you find it, let me know, I think we may be close to record amounts of rain.  For the month of July we are currently at 8.8" with 9 days to go in the month.  In the last 28 days we have received 11.3" of rain.  That is a lot of rain in one months time.

I want to thank my crew for hanging in there the past 3 weeks.  It has been tough with long hours at times.  They have done a great job getting the course back into shape after all these rains.

Bunkers on Saturday morning.  We had 3 guys work until 6pm Saturday night to get the water off the fairways.  They then showed up early Sunday morning to get the course ready and came back Sunday afternoon to mow fairways to prepare for the Monday outing.

Last Friday, we started reseeding the areas we lost turf due to the rain.

The smaller areas in the fairways we are seeding by hand.

Last week was spent on tree clean up from the storm.  The Hickory on 18 was the last one we cleaned up.  We had to wait until it was dry enough to drive our equipment down next to the green.