More winter damage discussion

While winter is behind us, some of the area courses have damage that still lingers.  FCC suffered minor damage to the practice putting green.  Last week we sodded a portion of that damage and the remainder will fill in after a brief time.  Below is a link to a radio interview done with a Michigan State University Professor that describes the winter we had and the steps that Superintendents took.

Radio Interview Link

This will give you some idea of why we added snow to the greens during the winter at times and also why we cleared the snow off the greens at other times.  We were fortunate to escape with minor blemishes, other poa greens in the Midwest were not so fortunate with many courses having to play on temp greens for a few months.

Early morning sky, tee project

With the clouds rolling in this morning, we had a beautiful sunrise.  The saying goes "Red sky in morning, sailors take warning" - it usually means storms coming.  While we did not get a large storm come through, we did get plenty of rain.

 

 

 

 

This morning we were able to sod a couple tee decks before the rain hit.

#1 tee in the early morning.

 

#1 tee an hour later.  We also sodded #11.  The rough sod will go down later, once all the bentgrass sod is laid.  All of this sod is coming from our own sod nursery along 8 fairway.  Growing this in-house gives the new tees an immediate appearance that it fits it's surroundings, it also saves on expenses vs. purchasing the sod from a grower.  Once we are finished harvesting the sod from the nursery, we will grow another batch of turf for a future project.

 

As weather permits, we will continue sodding the remainder of the new tees.  My goal is to have them complete by the end of the week.

 



Frost damage

You may have noticed on your home lawn some browning of the turf in the last week.  This was due to the heavy frost/freezing we saw last week Wednesday.  We are seeing some general browning of the rough out on the golf course, again - due to the frost.  The tips of the grass blades are the only part of the plant affected and will grow out of the damage within a few weeks.  Below is a link to a video explaining the damage:

Frost damage video link

Here you can see where the snow from last Tuesday insulated the turf from the freezing temps on that following Wednesday.  We are seeing this on almost all the green and tee banks.  It looks like we stripped it with fertilizer - this was all mother nature.

 

 

A little bit of everything

First of all, what's up with that snow?

 

Spring is trying to come!

We leave ourselves a list of things to do that can be done on frost/snow days.  When the weather is good we spend most of our time out on the course.  When we can't be on the course, we fall back to our "frost project list".

We came through this harsh winter very well.  The two minor blemishes we had on the putting green are starting to heal in.  One of the spots was bad enough that we wanted to sod a portion of it, speeding up the recover process.

This picture shows the difference in the old shingles vs. the new color (black) shingles.  I think the roof looks great, very classy.  The project is still ongoing.  With the shingle portion done, the contractor is now working on the flat roof portion.  Along with the flat roof, the chimneys need to be finished, a layer of stucco will be added to the bottom, then the chimneys will be painted.  The project has been going well thus far with no major surprises.

 

April is always a crazy month for us - course opens, grass is growing, lots of mowing to do, winter projects need to be finished and spring project need to be started.  As always, we make it through.

 

Roof project

We have a lot going on at the club right now - aerification was completed last week, we are mowing things for the first time the last few days, bunker clean-up was just completed, the 1/2 way house on 15 is getting painted and we are in the middle of roofing the Clubhouse.

The roof project is going well thus far, most of the shingles have been tore off and as of now - about half of the building has the new shingles in place. 

Removing the first shingles early Wednesday morning.

As we expected, we have found certain areas under the old shingles where the plywood was rotten and needed to be replaced.  There have been multiple leaks over the last few years, causing us to place buckets in the attic.

Wednesday morning

Thursday afternoon.  As you can see we went with a different color shingle, the new color is all black.  This will be a classic look.

 

Despite the 30 mph winds were are getting today, the job site has remained relatively clean.  The contractor is doing a great job of keeping debris from blowing onto the course.  The shingle portion of the job will be finished within the next two days.  The flat roofs will start being replaced tomorrow with the entire project completed next week.

 

 

Bunker work

The last three days were spent mainly on bunkers.  They sat unattended since October, this left plenty of debris, weeds and washouts for us to clean-up. 

All the weeds were pulled and the bunkers were cleared of debris.

All the washouts were fixed.

 

The edges were raked smooth.

 

Then the entire bunker was raked with the machine.  Finished bunkers just make the course look good.  With this project now complete, the course is really taking shape.

 

 

All about the greens today

Glad to see a few of you made it out for a round of golf this past weekend.  I know the greens were sandy and shaggy due to the aerification, they will come around quickly.

Today was all about the greens, we mowed them for the first time of the season today.  Typically we wait to open the course until we get two mowings in.  If we waited that long this year, we would have to wait another week.  I thought the membership would appreciate the availability of the course on a decent weekend. 

Besides mowing them for the first time, we also dragged them with a steel mat to smooth out the sand once more, sprayed growth regulators to suppress seed heads and we fertilized them to give the greens a good spring feeding.  Over the remainder of this week, we will continue to mow and roll the greens to bring back the smoothness.  This coming weekend you will see a big difference.

 

Course opening

We will be opening the Golf Course for the season on Saturday.  Assuming we aren't flooded with all this rain, if we get some decent temps soon, the pins will be in the greens and ready for golfers.

Aerification on the greens and fairways were completed this week.  Within a few weeks, the holes will be filled in and we will be off and running with the normal course conditions.  Because of the amount of time spent on the aerification process this past week, we have not been able to get the bunkers back in shape from their winter sleep.  Next week, our first priority will be cleaning up the bunkers.

If we don't see you out here this weekend, we will see you soon!

Taking advantage of the great weather this week

Sorry for the lack of posting the few days, we have been quite busy.  The weather has been wonderful.  Don't feel too bad that the course was still closed on these warm and sunny days, we were getting a lot accomplished out on the course.

We were scheduled to aerify greens this past Monday and aerify fairways on April 7.  We were able to aerify both this past Monday.  The fairway aerification is contracted out and the contractor was looking for a dry course to work on, so we moved the process up a week and got it done.  The Grounds staff has been putting in 14 hour days to get it all done before the rain hit.  We finished up late last night, now the rain is helping us clean things up.

Monday morning we started by pulling plugs on the fairways and adding sand to the greens.

The greens were then solid tined with 3/4" tines about 4" deep.

Once the sand is dry, we can then drag it into the open holes

Later in the day, we took out our new greens roller and started rolling the green.

Wayne made sure all the irrigation heads on the fairways and greens were marked.  One busted head by an aerifier can mean hours of labor in repairs and a couple hundred dollars in parts.

We had three machines going on the fairways, it's a quick process with the right equipment.

The cores were then turned over with a drag mat to aid in drying.

Once dry we then pulverize the plugs letting the soil fall back into the ground.  This leaves only thatch left behind to be blown off the fairway.

We also verticut the fairways to break up any left over pieces of dirt.

The fairways are then blown off and the debris is vacuumed up.  By last night the fairways were very clean.  I'm glad this project is over for the membership.  Withing a few weeks, all the holes will be filled in and we will have one long season uninterrupted by further aerification.  Aeriying is a necessity on the golf course to provide the healthy tuf that is needed to withstand the stresses of the summer.  Although it is a yearly occurance, there is never a good time to get this done in the golfers mind.  Having this done before we even opened will make this year more enjoyable.

 

Any down time we had in the aerification process we spent on picking up sticks.

Today with the rain it gave us chance to work on some equipment cleaning.

Along with some housecleaning.

 

The Grounds staff did a great job this week, putting in a lot of hours making sure the aerification process was as clean as possible so that when we open, you will hardly notice.

Opening when?

The Pro-shop has been getting a fair amount of questions on when we will be opening.  I can not give a definite answer on that.  Typically we don't know until 3-4 days before we open.  The rule of thumb has been to mow the greens 2 times before we open, allowing the grass to come out of dormancy before we subject it to traffic and injury from ball marks.  If we maintain this rule, I don't foresee us opening in the next ten days.  The temps next week will still be in the 30's and the greens have not begun to grow yet.  I will let you know when the course will open as soon as I feel comfortable with the weather.  Just a reminder that we do have temp pins out in the approaches on holes 1, 2, 7, 10, 11 and 12.  Feel free to get a few swings in when we get those 50 degree sunny days.

Putting green, Spring clean-up

With all of the ice now melted off of the putting green, we can get a good look at the turf.  The low areas of the green where ice sat for 60+ days definitely saw some injury.

The brown spot in the middle of this picture is a low area in the green where ice sat for a few months.  The lighter brown towards the sides of the picture are mounds in the green where the snow was blown off from the wind - causing the tips of the turf to turn brown due to the cold.

These "puddles" of ice damage are a very deep brown.  I can still see spots of green turf down by the soil.  I think we might get lucky and this will grow out.  Another week under ice cover and these spots would have completely died.  If we do see areas not recovering this spring, we will be replacing the damaged areas with healthy sod from our nursery.

 

The good news is that this damage is only present on the practice putting green.  This was due to the fact that we did not remove the snow from this green to melt the ice a few weeks back.

 

On Monday we started our stick clean-up on the course, preparing and cleaning the course for an opening sometime soon.

We spent all day on 8 yesterday cleaning up debris from the floods this winter, today we again will be cleaning up 8 and 9.  Next week we will be finishing up the remainder of the course.

 

 

Flowers and tee markers

First I want to update you on our new tee marker colors.  Black will be the new "back tee" color, followed by Blue, White and Gold for the "forward tee".

We will no longer have a Red tee marker.  Also, the new tees that were built this past fall will be the home of the white markers.  The course yardages will be as follows: Black - 6842, Blue - 6399, White - 5661, Gold - 5383.  The Proshop has updated the scorecard accordingly.

 

 

 

 

As you may be aware, our Horticulturist - Tim Stumpp, left us for a teaching position last Spring.  We elected to cut that full-time position from the staff to save on labor costs.  The work that is done around the Clubhouse is now done with seasonal labor with direction from myself and my assistants.  Tim always did a great job around the Clubhouse with the flowers and landscaping, we will be continuing that level of product with Tim's help.

 

Tim is currently teaching at the Blanchard Valley Center on Sandusky, his specialty is Horticulture.  Last fall, he and I sat down and came up with a win-win plan for both of us.  Tim along with the help of his clients at BVC are growing most of our annuals for the upcoming season.  They have been growing them from seed in their greenhouse.  Come Spring, Tim and his clients will be planting them at FCC, giving them an opportunity to learn valuable job skills.

The flowers they are growing look great.  I toured the greenhouse today to check on the progress.

In the end, we get wonderful looking flowers and BVC gets a great learning opportunity.

 

 

Greens update

Yesterday was a great "Spring" day.  We started our Spring cleaning on the golf course, cleaning up leaves, sticks and debris around the front entrance of the club, around the clubhouse and also around 9 green.  Also with most of the snow melted I was able to make a walking tour of the course, taking inventory of the winter damage and making notes of projects that need to get done.

The course looks great out there.  We got through winter with very little damage.  Most of the damage is superficial and the grass will make a full recovery with a few weeks of good growing conditions.  We definitely have some damage and battle scars, but overall we made out well.

This is wind desiccation damage on the putting green.  Just like previous pictures of 12 green, these are areas that were exposed to the very cold temps and high winds.  There is green turf underneath, these areas will grow out of this damage with a few weeks of 60 degree weather.

When we removed the snow from the greens a few weeks ago, we did not get to the putting green and 8 green.  There was a few areas of ice the remained on those greens yesterday, being melted completely away by the end of the day.  This is the ice cover on the putting green, underneath I saw green turf.  Therefore, we made it through winter with no damage due to ice cover.

This is the snow mold damage to 1 green.  With it being Pink Snow Mold, this damage is mainly superficial and the turf will recover from this damage.  Again, I can see green turf underneath the damage, come mid-April we won't know it ever happened.

This is some bruising of 3 green due to removing snow with the snow blowers.  This will recover quickly.

It is hard to see, but these are deer tracks across the green (you can click on the picture to get a better view).  This type of damage is all over the course.  This also will recover quickly.

Here is where the deer dragged their hoofs across the green, I need to remind them to stop being so lazy and pick their feet up!

These are the icebergs that were deposited along 8 fairway, it will be a while before these melt away.

 

 

Firewood pile is growing

The guys have been hard at work this week cutting up the logs from the winter's tree removal, most of it being Ash.

We deliver the wood to members throughout the year, the pile was almost depleted.  We now have enough wood to make it through another season.

We see deer on the course frequently, this morning we had 12 of them on 3 fairway.

There was one buck in the group, he still had one antler attached, the other must have been shed not too long ago.