Approach Repairs

We've had a busy little month of August.  After we completed the bunker renovation, we turned our attention to some approaches that were in bad shape.  Back in 2005 most of our approaches were converted from our cool season turf of rye grass to zoysia.  This was to act as a buffer to the Quickstand Bermuda that was sprigged into our fairways the same year.  It was also decided to do collars as well, which after all these years in hindsight hasn't been successful.  What is frustrating, the idea of zoysia collars and approaches was thought to allow us to compete with newer courses, but almost every course in our area has either bent or ryegrass collars.

Many of the zoysia approaches have faired ok over the years, some doing well, some not quite.  In most cases, those that have not faired well, have multiple issues, but one as I have learned more about maintaining zoysia, in my opinion, most of the issues have had to do with irrigation coverage and surrounding terrain.

The two worst approaches we repaired this year have irrigation heads out in front of the green that need to run to water the front part of the green, I have learned over time, that zoysia really doesn't like quite as much irrigation as bentgrass greens in the transition zone. And while not large slopes for our area, we do have some terrain that sends water down across these approaches. Combine that with our maintenance equipment traffic and our cart traffic from golfers, these approaches had seen better days.

                    

These are the before pictures of our 16th and 17th approaches and the edge of the bunker on 16.  Looks like that bunker is a candidate for our next bunker renovation.

We stripped the poor sod off the approaches, added some dirt to level them, and then added fresh sod.  We did water them lightly to keep them moist, and have added starter fertilizer to them.  While we attempted this renovation a little late in the season, as we expected temperatures to start cooling off heading into September, (especially when we saw a week of below average temperatures, along with a forecast showing the same).  We did get lucky in that once the sod was installed, we have been seeing our high temperatures for the day, stay in the 90's.

                     

                   

The first couple of pictures are the two approaches while work is in progress, the next three pictures show after the sod had been installed.  

Our future goals are to better manage the greens irrigation by trying to do more hand watering, which is sometimes tough with our smaller crew and our ambitious work schedules.  We also will visit our fertilizer and chemical programs to address the approaches.  It isn't that easy to design a program for greens which includes a growth regulator program that is detrimental to collars, especially warm season ones.  This has been why over the past few years we have been seeding with bentgrass into our zoysia and in some cases Bermuda collars.  We have struggled with weeds in the collar area, as we have avoided applying pre-emergent herbicides, so we could have the bentgrass seed germinate.  We are having to treat our collars which we are transitioning to cool season, different then our approaches which are warm season.  The timing of applications and some of the products are so different for warm and cool season grasses in the transition zone, that sometimes for these small areas, I tend to miss applications due to weather conditions, other applications end up taking precedent on the golf course, or irrigation and/or mowing schedules hamper my plans.

                    

We did have some extra sod left over, so we created a zoysia plot out in our turf farm.  We have plots of fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, and Bermuda also.  It allows us to repair any small damaged areas when we need to, also it allows us to try different products on the different turf.  

We will look into improving at least two approaches a season from here on out, until all have been replaced, as needed.  And we hope through trail and effort, and some education from industry sources.  We can improve our approaches and collars.

As always,

Thanks for reading!

Mel        

Bunker Renovation

What a busy summer it has been!  Attending local Chapter meetings, working on Chapter business, volunteering at our local Korn Ferry Tour event, attending the University of Missouri Turf Field Day, along with just normal maintenance items at our course, and thanks to Rain Bird Golf Irrigation, a quick trip out to the U.S. Open.  With all these events, which have pictures, I really had some material to post.  Just finding the time, with my limited skills at blogging, sadly most of this summer's fun has not found it here to my blog.  Anybody who follows me on Twitter @3sticksCGCS would have seen pictures of all of this summer's action.  Also some of the local superintendent chapter events can be found by visiting www.ozarkturf.org and checking out our news section.  If I don't have new items to post regularly, I really should go back and visit some of the events of the season.

We set aside time and money to renovate one bunker per season.  We figure at that rate, all bunkers will be renovated once every 14 years.  Most bunkers are figured to last just 7-10 years before a renovation is needed.  This year's staffing at our course was a little light, we had one of our students come back in a very limited role, as he was taking classes, and another was working at an internship, which eventually caused him to leave earlier than planned.  This prevented us from starting one of our yearly project that we budget for, renovating a bunker.   Once our one student finished up his classes, and we were able to replace our other student, we set out to get that bunker renovation done before all of our summer students, headed back to school and those that stayed in town, would revert to their limited work schedules.

We have just 14 bunkers on our course, and we have renovated all but 3 of them in the past 10 years.  One greenside bunker and our two fairway bunkers, since they haven't been holding water.  The first 9 bunkers we did, we would clean out the old sand, clean out the drain, or replace it if needed, and then add fresh sand.  We had been using the same sand that we topdress with.

 
Both the above pictures have bunkers containing fresh topdressing sand.  These bunkers were renovated in 2015. 


In 2016, our three course facilities decided to switch sands to a little heavier coarser "Osage Bunker Sand"  I wasn't a big fan of it, more so because the price was double, and there was some concern when it got splashed out on to the green, it wasn't the same sand as our topdressing sand.  But bunkers with higher slopes and the topdressing sand also became contaminated with silt and clay when it would wash off the slopes in high rain events.  This contaminated sand was finding it's way onto our greens areas also.  Since the switch, we have noticed there has been less movement of the sand in heavy rain events.  If we see the sand starting to affect greens performance, we will go in to those areas and core aerate to remove the poor material and place fresh sand in its place.    

Bunkers with the Osage Bunker Sand installed.  The two top pictures show the built up lip that we failed to remove.  The top bunker was renovated in 2016, the bottom picture 2017.  

 We installed this new sand in our first bunker in the summer of 2016, and found it wasn't washing out with the heavy rains, we did our second bunker in 2017.  We just did our third bunker with this sand last week, and we are really excited to see how it works in this bunker, as it has one of the higher slopes.  This bunker was actually the first bunker we had refurbished in 2008, our first bunker renovation since I had arrived in 2003.  I'm sure I have pictures on a disc somewhere, since it was done back before we had cameras in our phones.

                   

The above pictures show before we started the renovation.  The topdressing sand in the bunker had been washed off the back slope many times, causing it to become contaminated with clay and silt.  Also in the middle picture the build up on the edge can be clearly seen.

The one big difference we did with this recent bunker renovation, was take down the sand that had built up on the lip area where we would enter and exit the bunker.  On previous renovations, we had failed to remove that sand build up, but as we continue to renovate bunkers with our new "Osage Bunker" sand, we will knock down those lips.

                    

In the above pictures, it shows the rock and clay in the base of the bunker.  The middle picture is the drain pipe that the original contractor used, PVC sewer pipe.  We replaced it with black perforated pipe and back filled the trench with fresh pea gravel.  Yes, that is an irrigation line there in the corner of the bunker which we hit and had to repair.  

              

The finished product.  We stole some zoysia sod off our lowest driving range tee, that rarely gets used, for that first strip.  We then took some fescue sod out of our turf plots for the next few passes, and then feathered out the slope and seeded with fescue.  Just using what we had available on hand to finish the project.  I estimate the cost to be about $1,300 not counting labor.  

We will continue to look into renovating a bunker per year as our budget allows.  The other main projects we try to do yearly is to relevel some tees and top with fresh sod, and we are also looking into adding some tees for Seniors.

Thanks for reading!

Mel
 

Big Hole Outing

Just a little over a week ago, our course tried something new.  Some history that lead to it, at our regular Ozark Turf Association Scholarship and Research Outings, we would have a large hole cut on one of the par 3's.  If we got in the game, we could play to that hole, which was near the front of the green, while the regular hole was on the back.  Not to say it was easy though, one year we had to use our mulligan to make birdie from about 10 feet.  We were left of the pin, and there was just enough of a slope to challenge us.  Another reason was some networking at the Orlando Golf Industry Show in 2017, there was a lot of talk about different ideas to encourage new play.  I decided to invest in a 9 hole set of 8" cups.  The cups themselves were pretty inexpensive, and worst case scenario, we could always use the cup cutter to repair greens if needed.  If I remember the investment was about $200 dollars.  This led to our course hosting a Big Hole Tournament.

When working with the Pro Shop on what holes to use the Big Holes, the first decision was since it was a small group, they wanted to do a reverse shotgun, starting on # 1 and working backwards to about #15.  We were concerned that on 4 holes on the front nine had soil greens and we weren't sure how hard it would be to cut holes in them, we did find them just as easy as on our USGA greens.  So we cut all of them on the front nine.  We did find one issue, with the breeze that day and the 7 1/2' flag poles, the edge of the cup would pull out slightly.  When the pin was removed, the cup sat just under the green surface.  I shared this issue on Twitter and it was suggested to use long nails in the drainage hole of the cup to hold the cup down.  We will give this a try before the next tournament.  

           


Once all play passed the big holes, two of our crew members removed the big cups and replaced the plug.  This allowed the course to be ready for the regular play that followed the Big Hole Tournament.  A lot of care had to be taken to replace the plug, extra greens mix had been removed because the cup cutter itself didn't quite cut deep enough.  They were able to replace the plugs in front of play with great results.  New cups were cut when the big hole was being cut as well, and then "capped" during play for the big hole.  the "cap" was removed and the hole ready for play.  The picture on the left shows the big plug replaced and leveled.

                
 

Players had a great time, and it was fun to watch how aggressive they were putting at the 8" cups.  Play itself was a two person scramble, with two putt maximum, so really aggressive putting should rule regardless of the holes with the regular sized cup or the big hole.  Another interesting stat was not all scores on the front nine with the big cups were the lowest.  The Big Hole tournament was something different and we will host it again in the future.

Thanks for reading!

Mel

Some new winter projects

With the early start to winter, and with the length of it, along with an additional full-timer, we were able to get our regular winter projects of ballwasher repairs and painting, yardage posts, tee markers, and other golf accessories done fairly early.  So what did we move onto to keep us busy?

Entrance signs:  We have an entrance sign, that upon closer inspection, had faded some after over 15 years.  I'm not sure when it was installed, but I've been here 15+ years.

We removed the sign and refurbished it.  The first picture on the left is after it received a good pressure washing.  and the next showed the process of painting the background.

                              

                               















These pictures show the sign after it had been painted.

Here is the sign reinstalled along with a new block bed that replaced the rotted out railroad tie bed that had surrounded the sign before.  We had it reinstalled just in time for this year's Masters Tournament.  This block bed was done by one of our Park's Operations crew.  They will be adding dirt and plant material in the near future.

 

The Horton Smith sign stood in front of our flagpole, after we had removed that sign, we found the standard park issue welcome sign, that was acting as the frame.  For some reason, I felt that sign had some historic significance and I wanted to display it in some manner. (also I'm cheap and hated just throwing it out),  We as a crew, decided to take ownership of it, we refinished it, and found a spot to display on our gate at our maintenance facility. The old rotting railroad tie bed can be seen in the picture on the left.    

We made note of some rotting railroad ties at the first tee, and one of our staff remembered some retaining wall block at another facility, that was not being used.  We gladly confiscated the block and the crew created a new retaining wall on our first tee.  This is probably one of our bigger projects we had taken on since I had been here.

 

We removed the rotten railroad ties, and a bed that was the bricks were used as a boarder.  Carts were always running into them and knocking them loose.  We removed that bed and the need for the brick border.  We installed the retaining wall block and finished the project with most cost just being labor.  We did have to buy 15 blocks to finish up the project, so the cost of materials was $63.00  The guys took ownership of all these projects.  I just suggested that we wanted to fix up what was there, and the guys took it from there.

I'm pretty proud of these guys, they always take pride and ownership of the many projects we do.

As always,

Thanks for reading!

Mel

Spring Training

Over the past few years, our Park's Operations Superintendent, (who is our employer's supervisor over the golf maintenance operations), has always promoted staff training.  We have trained on a variety of topics over the years, from chain saw and equipment safety, to preparing for hazardous weather events, tackling irrigation troubleshooting and auditing, and even fire safety, thanks to our city firefighters, (with some of these events, I can travel back and share at a later time).

This Spring was no exception, we had Matt Giese, from Syngenta come speak to our golf course maintenance staff, (we have three golf courses with 15 full time staff, 2 contract employees, and depending on the time of year, another 15 or so seasonal and part-timers).  Matt had previously spoke to our superintendent chapter about calibrating sprayers.  I checked with him to see if he could provide this same presentation to our staff, and he happily agreed to do that, along with helping us with spreader calibration.

              

Spreader calibrations we had already worked on the previous spring at my facility.  We have Andersons, and Scotts spreaders, (for the youngsters in the business, Scotts many years ago had sold much of their professional turf and golf line to The Andersons, including their spreaders), and having a couple of different models posed some concerns for us when using the spreader settings on the bags for our starting points.  So in 2018, we used the calibration tool that came with our Anderson's spreader and calibrated it and our two older R8-Scotts spreaders, (by the way, for some reason, the two spreaders the crew will grab first).  After we used the calibration tool, we set up all three spreaders with the same amount of fertilizer, and each of us spread that out on our 60 x 80 turf plots next to the shop.  All three put out the proper amount of fertilizer, so we knew they were adjusted properly.

              

   

What we really learned from Matt's presentation was fertilizer distribution.  Is the fertilizer or product being distributed evenly across the area we are applying it over.  Matt had as his tools for this part of the demonstration, was some rain gauges, and a fertilizer calibration tray system.

               

Scotts spreaders have a cone device under the hopper, to evenly distribute the fertilizer particles.  They will provide the proper cone setting on their products, but when it comes to using other products, we tend to guess.  I will usually check a similar Andersons product and go with their cone setting.

What we found out with the calibration testing, this cone setting doesn't always hold true.  We were using another brand of 25-0-5, with an SGN of 205, we used their setting of M on the bag, and we usually will use a cone 6.  After finding out that more product was distributed to the left of the spreader, we found a similar sized Andersons product with a cone setting of 4, that actually made the distribution pattern worse.  We went the other way to a cone 8, which is usually reserved for 125 -150 SGN sized particles and we came out with a more even distribution pattern.  Below on the left is the results of the first run, on the right, our third run.  We also learned the effective width of our pattern.  After we had concluded on our cone setting, Matt had measured out a test run, we weighed the material before putting it in the hopper, made our test pass, and then measured what was left in the hopper.  We found out our speader was still calibrated properly when it came to putting out the proper amount of product.

    

After our spreader calibration trials, we moved onto sprayer calibration work.  We started out making a test run over a measured area, to find out our miles per hour of the sprayer.  We measured our boom widths, our height of nozzles from the ground, and lastly we would collect water coming out of the nozzles in the time it took our sprayer to cover our measured area.  What we found out was the sprayer was putting out the correct amount of water, for the measured area.  (We were looking at 40 gallons per acre, and we were at 41 - 42 gallons of water per acre).

       

The one part of sprayer calibration we wouldn't able to really show was the nozzle spray     pattern because of the high winds of that day, (fertilizing calibration was done out of the wind behind our maintenance building.  Matt has some test paper that would show the spray pattern, but we were unable to test that.  We did make a test run on some asphalt and it showed a good pattern, with an even dry down on the pavement.

All in all, my staff enjoyed the presentation.  Much thanks goes to Matt and Syngenta for supplying pitchers and rain gauges for measuring our products.  We were reminded the importance of calibrating our equipment, and found that ours was still adjusted properly.