Memorial Day in the Golf Business

As an Air Force brat, I've learned and I try to honor all those that served, and today that honor extends to those that paid the ultimate sacrifice.  We thank them for their service.

Every year I make sure I'm working so our flag is set to honor those that made that sacrifice.  I dutiful raise it back to full staff at noon. 

It has never been a day of celebration in our family, early on when dad was in the service, chances were, that if he was home, it was only for the day.  I do remember (well one of them, the other I was 3) he was definitely gone two of them, the first he was stationed in Goose Bay Labrador, (which kind of plays a big part in our being in the golf business).  The second time I do remember him being in Vietnam.  It is possible he missed others, but I'm not sure.  I'm just grateful that he did come home, and was able to retire at a young age after 20 years (couple in the Navy,  the rest in the Air Force.  As today we do honor those that served and did not return. 

After he retired, it still did not become a day of celebration as our whole family found ourselves in the golf business and we were always working on the holiday so others could enjoy the day.  We were fortunate enough to be able to spend time together as a family, since we all worked together at the golf course.  So many great memories over all the years.  Some great stories to tell for another day. 

It started out innocently enough.  Mom and Dad bought a house in Florida before he deployed to Vietnam, just north of Tampa, a place dad really liked from the days of painting runways with his dat at MacDill AFB.  Spring Hill was just getting started and Mom and I moved in as approximately the 125th family in December of 1968.  Spring Hill Country Club opened with 9 holes in the summer of 1969, right as dad arrived back home.  Mom who had held many short order cook positions prior (one at a Woolworth lunch counter in DC), was able to get on as the cook at SHCC.  As the golf course added a second nine, dad was going to Tampa College, the club decided to add weekend dinners for the members.  There were no restaurants at the time in Spring Hill proper, so it was popular, and they would need a bartender on those dinner nights.  Enter dad who had learned to tend bar while stationed in Goose Bay.  As time went by, they decided to make dad the food and beverage manager, (which meant they could pay him salary, where he joked, he was lucky to make minimum wage with all the hours he worked).  He also began working in the pro shop and taking care of the golf cart batteries.  When I was old enough to work, I became a cart boy.  But I always admired the maintenance staff, and the mowing equipment.  After high school I started working on the maintenance crew during summers and part time while attending college.  Eventually when at Florida State I could not pass the audition to get into the music school, (at the time I was wanting to be a band director), It was suggested to attend Lake City Community College and go into the golf maintenance profession since I was always working on the golf course, so why not?  And here I am today.

My favorite piece of equipment back from those days.  It was always my goal to mow fairways with one of these.  It took about 4 years and some of our guys retiring our cutting back to part time for me to finally get to run it. 






Again, I wish to finish by thanking all the family and friends who had someone in their lives make the ultimate sacrifice.  I hope everyone remembers and honors them. 

Thanks for reading. 

Mel

   

Coming Out of Dormancy

As our fairways are finally coming out of dormancy, so should I with this blog.  We did see the greening of our fairways earlier than normal due to the above average temperatures in late winter, but with a more normal April and so far what seems to be a slightly below average May in temperatures, and with a lot of rain and lack of sun, we just didn't see growth in our fairways.  Growth was so slow, that we finally mowed them for the first time this past week.
 
While the blog has been quite since December, we certainly haven't been in regards to getting things done.  It actually has been a pretty busy winter and spring, yet odd as well. 

We did our normal winter projects, such as repairing and painting golf accessory items. But we also stayed busy with above average play through the winter and early spring.  Winter wasn't even really winter it seemed.  We even had our Forsythia budding out the earliest I can remember, (and I know, I record the actual dates every spring, going back to 2012. Forsythia this year was starting to bud on February 13th.  The average time frame is usually in March, typically that second week.

Our normal winter projects of painting our par 3 yardage blocks and repair and painting our ballwashers.  While the paint we used last year for ballwashers was suppose to match our flags last season, out in the sun, they really didn't, so we just looked for a good Royal Blue to paint them with this year.                                                                                                                

     

But the best part of winter was getting to attend the Golf Industry Show (GIS) in Orlando, staged by the Golf Course Superintendent's Association of America (GCSAA), where I had to chance to learn and network, which always seems to recharge the batteries for the season.  I also represented our local chapter the Ozark Turf Association at the Annual Meeting casting our chapter's votes and also filled in casting votes for our friends in the St. Louis area for the Mississippi Valley Golf Course Superintendents Chapter.  It is not every year I get to attend, so thanks to my employer and also my chapter.

 


With the mild weather, we also were able to make many of our applications on time, we were able to clean up the poa out of our Bermuda tees and fairways, get our pre-emergent applications down, and make our fairy ring preventive applications on time.  I was somewhat worried about the timing, with warm temperatures coming so early, March being above normal,  April found itself being closer to normal, which I believe allowed our applications to work, as it appears now anyway.  I still have my fingers crossed as we were the recipients of what seemed endless rains, so there is that worry of products breaking down prematurely, but that gives something to look forward to (or not) as the season progresses.

Truck making our fairway fertilizer/pre-emergent application.  We split out pre-emergent applications on fairways.  We will make a spray in March, and then the truck with the fertilizer and pre-emergent comes in for us in April.  He can load and spread in under an hour.  If we had the spreader to do it, our best timing would be 6 hours times 2 people (loader and operator)  Plus it would take time away from our other applications in our programs. 

It seems that despite the rains, we have been able to keep up with most of our greens programs, be it we might be a week behind with the verticutting and topdressing program.  As for other areas of the course, we seem to be with in sight of our timeframes we set for ourselves to get these projects and applications done.  Items such as fertilizing, seeding, slicing, applying preventive products and even getting in a post herbicide application, we feel the course is doing fine.  

 

Are aeration process above, which this year was done in one day as we raced to finish before heavy rains had hit.  The one thing that we missed due to the weather was our normal fertilizer application on newly aerated greens. 

To the right is one of our verticutting and topdressing runs.  We aim to verticut greens four times before the summer arrives.  The results we see are leaf blades that do not get "fat and happy" so we see better ball roll from the practice.  The greens also have thatch removed before summer so they do not get soft and puffy during the middle of summer. 


This has been a quick attempt to get readers caught up on our busy summer.  Now the goal is to avoid long winded post, and to provide more consistent and item focused posts on a regular basis.  We work hard to prepare a plan and timeframe for our many tasks on the course, this blog should be no different.

I thank you for reading!

Mel

Catching up on tree work

As frost and cold weather has finally hit, we are now into that winter season where we concentrate more on projects than of keeping the grass cut.  Not to say we are still doing a little of cutting grass here in the transition zone.  When we do have some decent weather, we still try to maintain a semblance of maintaining the golf course for play, because we can see a decent amount of play even in the winter.

Luckily for us, any large tree work, removing or pruning which occurs with our larger trees, we benefit with our employer have a full time tree crew.  They will when requested come out and do plenty of work on trees that we just don't have the staff or equipment to handle.

What we tend to concentrate on is pruning hanging branches and taking care of our smaller newer trees.  Back in 2007 we had the fortunate or unfortunate (all depends on one's perspective) problem of losing about 200 trees on our golf course to one of the worst ice storms in our area since our course was built in the early 1960's.  During this ice storm we lost about 200 trees on an 100 acre golf course.  Unfortunately this was before smart phones and what pictures I have of that time I've still not put into a digital format.  Over the 2014 and 15 seasons we did replace about a 180 trees.  Fortunately we were able to do a better job of placing them then the previous placements over the years before I arrived.  Many of the lost trees were large elms, arranged in straight rows.  We planted a wider variety of trees from hardwoods to evergreens.  When placing these new trees we were looking more at placing them for safety reasons than as hazards.  We were also able to watch for creating shade issues for the turf.  In the mid 2000's we changed fairways and tees from a cool season turf to warm season Bermuda.  We did learn to avoid the straight lines of old and grouped them a little more, I felt staggered groups would offer better protection and a little more visual interests once they mature.  Again with the large amount of trees to be planted we were grateful for the tree crew.  I marked the locations with the type of trees that had been selected for us, hoping I have found the right locations for the many different varieties. 

 
          
We have managed a good survival rate or dare I say great, through some effort and luck.  I've always heard a good survival rate in mass plantings are above 50 % on up to about 70%.  We achieved so far about 90%, like I mentioned, due to luck, and some tools like water drip bags, and also hauling an old spray tank around.  And I'm sure aided by irrigation as well.   

                                                

Now onto our recent tree projects.  We have never really concentrated on cleaning up around our evergreens, just trying to weedeat the best we could.  Partly because of staffing and also because I was always concerned that by removing the lower limbs, they wouldn't offer golfer protection as well.  As I felt their locations afforded protection from errant shots on neighboring fairways.  Finally after seeing them look trashy with not only grasses but other plants growing in and among them like mulberry bushes, we decided to address them. 

Above you can see some of the plant materials we were finding under some of our pine trees.  We originally started with removing limbs about knee high, when we didn't feel we had removed enough material, we went up to waste high.  The pictures below show a before and after shot from the same location.  This allowed us to achieve the goals we had set for this project. 

 

 

The goals we had set out to accomplish were the following:

• We wanted to clean up the areas under these trees just so we could provide a better look on the golf course.
• We wanted to make it easier to maintain the areas under these trees.  We can actually get mower decks under them.
• We wanted the trees to still provide for some protection from errant shots on neighboring holes.
• We wanted to provide for a little more air circulation then prior.
• And finally, we wanted anyone behind those trees to be able to have an opportunity to possible play a shot, or at least advance the ball.   

The last goal is something of an opinion that I have developed over time from my first impression of trees on the golf course, as I grew up playing the game, to one that I have now .  Some of that growth comes from the knowledge of how trees can be a detriment to the growing of good turf.  Part of the opinion comes from my knowledge of fairness and enjoyment of playing golf from my earliest days until now.  Something that I will explore later in another post.  Hopefully that post will bring some discussions about how we look at playing the game.  Part of my reason for starting this blog, to explore the game as a game and as a business. 

As always,

Thanks for reading!

Mel     

Fall a Great Time to Spray Weeds

We have just finished up our fall rough spraying of broadleaf and clover today.  We have been working on spraying areas of our roughs which are mostly fescue over the last few weeks, working around weather and mowing. 

It sounds like this might be late in the season for these applications, but last year when we really went after our weed issues in our roughs, we saw the great rewards this spring.  While I don't have pictures that justify the results, we could visually see the two boom passes I made last fall, where dandelions were absent and clover populations were less. 

This year I decided to expand the areas in the roughs to where I was making three to four passes with the sprayer to spray the clover and broadleaf weeds.  The results so far have been good. 

As you can see, there are some areas where the fescue roughs are really thin.  Part of this issue is these areas have never been fertilized in the 13 years I have been here, it has never been part of the budget.  Of course the thin turf leads to these specific weed problems.  But at a cost of $12.45 an acre, we are able to treat these areas for weeds.

We can't apply a fertilizer for that price.  Our golfers don't seem to have an issue, well except when we do have a lot of rain and we fall somewhat behind in mowing our roughs. 


I am hoping to look into at least fertilizing green and tee banks, and maybe a couple of roughs a year.  But when budgets are tight, the first area I cut is roughs, so in turn I can support the programs developed for greens, tees and fairways.



I do remember at a previous course, I had arrived to find tremendous grub damage and weak roughs.  I set forth that next season to treat all the roughs, (well the whole course actually) 90 acres with a fertilizer/insecticide combo product.  At the time the cost was $150 an acre (now with the insecticide being off patent, we can make the same applications for $60-75 per acre).  So we treated for a total cost of $13,500 dollars.  The following year we had to make some cuts, and after attending a seminar (where the observation was made, about beetles not laying eggs in far areas of the golf course that were not irrigated) and looking at our grub issues after that initial application, I decided to only treat 50 acres for a savings of $7,500.  All the while I was able to save and continue a greens program that was working great, and also my other fertilizer programs.  This provides some strong healthy weed free turf.  So weed free in fact that when a visiting turfgrass extension professor visited the course he asked what I was using for a pre-emergent, I said nothing since we couldn't afford it.  (Of course I didn't know the history and the previous superintendents could have been applying pre-emergent out the wazoo).  After that my motto has been the best pre-emergent is enough fertilizer. 

I do enjoy the number crunching from the discussion above, and that is our next project, to develop our agronomic plans to fit into our next budget cycle.

Thanks for reading!

Mel     

Its Learning Time

Not all of our time is spent out on the golf course, we do take advantage of educational opportunities that present themselves at many times of the year.  One of these times was last week.

The Ozark Turf Association (OTA) routinely puts on educational events for our members, but typically just one speaker for an hour on one topic, but last week we were able to put together speakers for a four hour session.  And this one wasn't just turf related, it happen to deal more with equipment, which is somewhat near and dear to me from my background attending Lake City Community College.  That program was a 3 year program that earned us an Associates of Science degree in Golf Course Operations.  Our first year was dedicated to a couple of core classes such as College English and Algebra, along with typing and accounting.  But we also had a lot of class time learning the basics of equipment repair and maintenance along with running our shops.  I will dive more into my time at Lake City in an upcoming blog.  I have to have something to talk about during the slower winter months. 

For the event we held last week, our first speaker was Stan Woodfin who is the Technical Sales Manager for Crader Distribution which distributes Stihl equipment. 

Stan presented some of the new updates that Stihl and other companies are making to their two-cycle engines.  While it was EPA emission regulations that lead to many of the updates, manufactures are finding that there are benefits for operators with these new regulations.  Engines are burning cleaner and burning less fuel as well.  This is actually saving golf courses and landscape companies money.

Stan did talk about different troubleshooting techniques that can help us diagnosis problems just by looking at different parts of the engine.



Our second speaker was John Daniels from the USGA who spoke about Optimizing Mower Setup.  At first it seemed like an odd topic from the USGA Green Section who deals with course prep/set up and turf health.  But upon hearing his presentation it made perfect sense.

There are a lot of factors that go into setting up cutting units for fine turf such as putting greens.  We have gone from mowing at fractions to mowing in metric measurements.  We did this though in my opinion so we can tweak heights of cuts for more precision to meet the demands of the golfers for smooth and fast surfaces.  It has been made easier with dial gauges such as the "Accu Gauge"  Instead of 5/32" we will set reels to .155, 9/64' becomes .140, 1/8" becomes .125.  Or courses mow even lower, it is not uncommon for tournament greens to be mowed at .100 or lower.  I was reminded, John said it is best to invest in a Prism Gauge to find out what the true height of cut is compared to a bench setting.  Bench settings can be one height but cutting height could be different depending on the weight of the cutting unit, and also the condition of the turf.  Thatch and moisture can always play a part in how the cutting units sit in the turf.         

I worked at an university golf course with some fair college players, and we would not mow below .155 with our walking greens mowers.  What led me to that height of cut was research done at Kansas State by current Rutgers turf researcher, Bingru Huang.  She looked at root length over the summers on greens mowed at 5/32" and 1/8".  Greens mowed at 5/32" did not loose a lot of root mass compared to greens mowed at 1/8".  I have since stuck to mowing greens at my course at 5/31" or .156 (5) since.  Our greens were fast enough for those players and they did like the smoothness that that amount of turf provided.  We were able to push greens speeds a little with moisture control in the greens, plus with the slope some greens had, we didn't want them too fast, to where the ball would not stop near the hole, (given the shot played into the green was in the correct location).

The main point was to keep mowers sharp and properly adjusted in order to achieve the best playing conditions. 

Our last speaker was Matt Giese from Sygenta who had a presentation on choosing the best spray nozzles for the best performance of our products we spray.  There are many factors when choosing nozzles, which provide the best pattern for the type of product that is being used.  Also a factor can be weather patterns, mainly wind.  Also one has to find which nozzle provides the best volume of water for the product we are using. 

Usually herbicide will use the lowest volume of water providing a more concentrated spray droplet.  Of course this is for a contact herbicide that we want to stay on the plant.  Contact fungicides will want a higher volume of water to coat more of the grass plant to protect it from pathogens or to kill already existing disease. 

Droplet size also plays a part is spray drift management.  We certainly don't want pesticides to be drifting off our target plants.  With the cost of some of our products maximizing their effectiveness is very important, which is why it is so important to choose the right nozzles.  Also the right nozzle choice allows us to cover more acreage when needed, using less tanks and taking less man-hours to make some applications. 

I did have to wonder and it would be interesting to see if the different nozzles produce better results when using systemic products on a preventative basis.  But I'm sure weather and other factors play more in the process of a product lasting longer than what the spray pattern might be.  On contact products or active disease, it probably matters more on the spray pattern to coat the plant better. 

As always the more I learn in educational events, the more I think about my current programs and I evaluate what I am doing, I do find myself knowing less, it seems. 

Would love to hear comments from everyone else on educational events that you have been able to attend. 

Thanks for reading!

Mel 

Helping Hands

I was reminded again today of what a great industry and group of peers I work with in the golf maintenance industry.  I was faced with a dilemma and a couple of weeks ago I tweeted out this picture.

It is our old Rain Bird 51 DR hold up tool that we use when we are working on our old Rain Bird heads.  It unfortunately has been run over a couple times with a cart I believe.  Rain Bird themselves and some other sources did not have them, which I don't blame them, these heads were old technology when they were installed in 1993. 

I also posted this on our Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) member forum.  That is where I heard from a retired superintendent who thought his old course just might have these tools. 



This is what arrived today,  a set of tools that should work just fine for our old irrigation heads.

I will certainly look forward to getting these out to the golf course to help us with our fall irrigation head repairs.  I can't express enough my appreciation for these. 

Of course this is nothing new in our industry.  I remember long ago when we were aerating greens one year at our course in New Jersey, we had our aerator break down.  With in an hour, we were back to punching holes after a near-by course had brought theirs over to our place.  I even heard talk of sharing equipment recently at our September Scholarship and Research fundraiser.  (Fundraising and golf should be a good topic for another blog over the slow winter time.)


Yes I mentioned meetings where we will get together and play some golf, but while we do that we also talk about what we are doing at our courses, often comparing notes and ideas.  I couldn't tell how many times I have gotten ideas from colleagues to take back to my course and try and provide a better product for my golfers.  It amazes me sometimes how we are so ready to help our fellow superintendents who are at courses that we actually compete for customers.

Even at a recent Chapter Delegates meeting at our GCSAA national headquarters in Lawrence, while talking about issues that affect our local chapters and members, whenever we had breaks, or on the bus ride back to the hotel, there we were discussing our part of the business of golf.  It didn't matter if we were from different parts of the country, growing different grasses, we were finding common ideas.  Even discussing personnel issues, such as how the new Overtime law would effect our different facilities. 









And now to mention the best most recent tool when it comes to sharing information.  It is social media of course!  Blogs from people much smarter than myself, Facebook groups, and even Twitter as the posts below show a couple of ideas I have learned from.  And by the way great people to follow.

Chris was a great follow leading up to and during the Ryder Cup.  He shared many of their practices, allowing us to pick and choose what might work for us, and also allowing us to promote new ideas to our stake holders at our courses.  It is amazing how if I promote a new idea, practice, product to my bosses, how easily I can sell it when I can say they do it at "so and so club"








It would be great to hear from others the success stories you have been able to achieve from help you have received from our peers.  Would love to hear about how other golf industry professionals, such as pros and managers of stories they have of helping one another. 

I am so glad to be part of this great industry. 

Thanks for reading!

Mel

It's Aeration Time

Yes, it is aeration time or otherwise known as, why are you messing up the greens when they're perfect?

Almost two weeks ago we set out for our yearly fall greens aerification.  The reasons we do pull cores is to try and remove as much organic matter in the top 3 to 4 inches. 

As can be seen in the picture of the soil profile, the top layer shows a little bit darker soil mix from the bottom of the profile which is the original greens mix.  We pull that organic matter out and replace it with fresh sand.  I do have some concern of the darker soil at about the 4-5" depth, where we are not able to get sand into that area of the profile at this time.  

Above are a couple of cores that we removed.  The one shows the depth of 3 inches and the other shows some of the root mass.  I believe some of that is from our solid tine aerations during the summer.  Those summer aerations or as I have learned to call them, venting's, are helpful to relieve compaction, just as a core aeration does, but it also allows for oxygen to get into wet soils.  The core aeration also helps remove some surface organic matter we will call thatch.  We also verticut to remove some of that thatch and will topdress to dilute the thatch as well. 

Prior to our first day of aeration we will verticut greens, figuring this is the perfect time to get one of the practices in (we try to verticut 4 times in the spring and 4 times in the fall weather and schedules permitting).  We begin pulling cores early while still dark and will start the process of picking up those cores.

      

  We are blessed to see a great sunrise due to starting so early.  Once the green is cleared and before we topdress, we will blow off any loose debris.

We will then topdress greens with about an 1" layer of sand, and will let that sand dry for most of the morning.  When we have felt some of it has dried enough, we start to drag that sand in using metal drag mats.  We are hoping to pick up the dry sand and have it start falling and filling in the aerations holes. 

We will then let that sand dry some more and then do a final drag, then we will roll, and change cups so the green will be ready for the next day when we reopen that nine holes.  We will also fertilize the greens so they can heal properly. We will have already fertilized previously about a week prior to aeration so greens would be actively growing when the aeration process was started. 

         

If the weather cooperates, the greens should be back to normal, or at least to the point that we are not blamed for missing putts which is usually in 11-12 days.

With our course set up and business model, we will aerate one set of 9 holes, which will stay closed for the day.  On day two we will open up the just completed 9 and close the other.  With 2 acres of greens we can do each 9 in about 10 hours per day.  With the 6 to 7 staff members we will usually have during the process, this is what works best for us.  We will always shoot for spring aeration in the first full week of April and the fall aeration is scheduled for the first full week of October. 

I do remember working at another course with bigger staff, and at different times of the year, where we would work from sun up at 5 AM to past dark which would be between 8 and 9 PM (or later)  and would do all 3 acres of our 18 greens.  And to follow up we would have a couple of our students water after, (we had a quick coupler system there).  They loved the overtime, but I know the following day we would all be about useless. 

I would love to hear how others attack this practice. 

Thanks for reading!

Mel