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.  

Storm Damage

Time as slipped by these past weeks, as staff has started leaving or working less hours as they head back to school, family obligations, such as, Dr. Appointments (eye and dentist), school shopping, a quick 3 day vacation to Indianapolis for Drum Corp prelims, and helping the move back to school, projects getting done, (was going to post a specific project we worked on, but trying to squeeze it in before the vacation days, I wouldn't have done it justice), superintendent chapter volunteer obligations, watching the exciting PGA tournament finish, and just running around kept things busy.

                     


First some pictures from our trip to Indy.  First time at Lucas Oil, but we spent many of times driving by on our way to visit family in Indiana or when we would come back from World Percussion Championships in Dayton.  The dream of the boy and us was he would be marching with a Drum Corp in Lucas.  We had attended a couple of audition camps through the years, but not this past one.  He did do winter percussion this past winter, but didn't try out for DCI.  I think the trip was a little bittersweet as he saw people he had auditioned with in the past, and with his making a winter percussion group this past season, it was probably his best chance to march in the summer, alas this was his age out year, the last year he could have marched.  The second picture is him checking out the field for the first time, the third is a picture of my favorite corps, Casper Troopers, one of the ones he had auditioned for.  His favorite is Santa Clara Vanguard (mine too back in the days of the late 70's when we watched on PBS), this year's champion.  I think it's important to spend some family time together, especially before he headed back to school, I think getting away from the course for a few days refreshed me as well.    

 The view as we are crossing the river into St. Louis, I was following the PGA via Tiger Tracker and other superintendents who had spent the week volunteering at the tournament, this was right before play was called.  we turned Southwest on I-44 and avoided all the rain that was plaguing the tournament.

We did hit some rain before we arrived home, where it had really poured.  There was some wind as well, but we weren't sure of the extent, until later that evening.

After we had arrived home, I knew I had to go back to the course, because the forecast when we had left that previous Wednesday had not called for the rain we had received, and the irrigation computer was set to run.  Upon arriving at the course, I shut the computer off, and went out to turn off three controllers that are not communicating with the computer.  At that time I saw we had received 2.5" of rain, and did see some debris down, but it was dark by that time.


The next morning we were greeted with branches and debris everywhere.  With the greens full of leaves, we concentrated first on clearing them and tees with blowers and picking up the loose branches.  The rain had come down so fast the night before, and we had been so dry, it was possible to allow carts and golfers to play, and with the nice cooler weather they did.

                      

With greens cleared on day one, the next day we mowed greens and collars and approaches.  With just two of us in that day, we continued with picking up smaller branches and debris and blowing off fairways.  On Monday, which was another day we were short handed and had two of us in, we concentrated on mowing fairways and greens again, spraying greens, picking up branches and blowing debris further into the rough.

                     

Tuesday and Wednesday when we had the most staff members in, we were able to set the course up for play and the crew really attacked the larger items needing removed by chainsaws.  Above are some of the small trees and larger branches or tree leaders that had broke.  Below was our nicest Ginkgo tree where the top had blow out of it.  Of all of our Ginkgo's, Murphy's Law I guess dictated the nicest one to be damaged.  I didn't even realize it was a Ginkgo, it was such a big and nice tree.  Our park's tree crew did say that it will live for short time until it starts rotting out from the missing top.  It might give us some time to get a new tree in it's place before we have to remove it all together.

               

We were able to finally repair and rake our bunkers on Thursday, all in all the crew did a nice job, and our customers didn't have any complaints about course conditions during the clean-up.  I attribute that to the prioritizing of cleanup and regular maintenance returning to greens and tees first, then fairways. Also to the crew's constant work, the golfers seemed to appreciate their efforts.

The next step will be the tree crew coming and removing some of the hangers in the Sycamores up where we can't reach them, assessing the health of the trees remaining, and looking at getting replacement trees in place for trees we lost or will loose in the future.

As always,

Thanks for reading!

Mel


     

Tournament Experiences

I just finished my second opportunity this week to experience golf course maintenance being performed at some of the highest levels.  I completed 5 evenings of mowing fairways at the Price Cutter Charity Classic on the Web.com tour, held at Highland Springs Country Club.  I thank Derek Wilkerson, CGCS, the superintendent at Highland Springs for giving me the opportunity.  I was able to hear discussions on how they kept the moisture in the greens during tournament week, I got to see the detailed work that included, hand watering of greens, raking bunkers specially for tournament play, filling of divots, setting up the course, blowing of clippings, many things we do not do at our facility.  Of course some of it is resources and how we prioritize them, but I do think the work that we do regularly on our course could use a little detailed improvement.  Despite a poor weekend weather forecast that caused plans to be changed on the fly, (which poor weather never materialized, just some light rain for the middle of the final round), it was amazing to see how the standard of course setup was not compromised due to that forecast.  Contingency plans were made, so they were prepared for the worst, but thankfully those plans were not needed.

                  

On the left is one of the tour trucks down at the maintenance area. In the middle is the 10th tee as I headed out to start mowing back nine fairways during the Tuesday evening practice rounds.  On the right as I was mowing down 11 fairway.  I was pretty proud of that mow line, although not every stripe was as good as that.  We were not cutting much grass, (although I could see the clippings pretty well), I found the shadows from the trees and the angle of the setting sun made some passes more difficult.  

                  

As these pictures from Wednesday evening after the Pro-Am finished show, mowing later in the evening was a little tougher.  The picture on the right shows the lights on the cart that was blowing behind me a couple of hundred yards away.

                

 This was the set up for Thursday and Friday evenings, (and Saturday as well). Equipment was staged with the slowest pieces to head out first.  The maintenance building is down by the eighth hole, Derek would be up at 8 tee, and call for us to start engines, the group in the fairway would have played their second shots or third shots into this par 5 hole, and the group on the tee would have hit their drives, at that point we would all head up the maintenance road toward 8 tee and into the subdivision going toward the entry road.  Once there, we would hold until players on the par 3 4th hole had teed off and we then headed down the entry road, those going to # 1 would go down the outbound side, we going to # 10 would head down the inbound road.  Work could start on # 1, but they couldn't cross the road to # 2 until play had moved onto # 5.  They would have to keep that distance behind play, and we could start mowing on # 10 and then to # 11.  Since going to # 12 would take us behind # 9 and # 18 greens, we would drive out through a vacant lot to proceed down to 13/14, depending on the job we were doing, some could work their way back to # 12, they had me move onto 14.  13 was a par 3 so no fairway, # 12 was mowed after # 9.  On Saturday with the early finish, I did go to # 12 after # 11.  I was just amazed at the orchestration that occurred to move us into position to maintain the course while avoiding golfers.

I took the chance to ask a lot of questions, especially of their mechanic, he would meet me on the course once a day to check the reel to bedknife setup and since I had a demo machine, he would check on its operation.  I really liked this mower, and will definitely look to demo it at our course.  
 

                   

 Also It must be said, that many thanks are passed on to our distributers who provided food for the crew.  BWI, GreensPro, Turf Professional Products, and Van Wall Equipment all provided food.  All in all, it was a great experience and I look forward to doing this again.

               

As always, Thanks for reading!

Mel

               

 

Fairway Goosegrass is back again

Despite our best efforts this season, we ended up with goosegrass again in our fairways.  And it showed up much earlier this year then in the past.  I'm guessing the warmer then average May and June had something to do with that?  May the average lows were 8.1 degrees above normal and the average highs were 9.3 degrees above normal.  In June the average low was 5.4 degrees above average and the average high was 5.5 degrees above average.  We really didn't have any excessive rain fall that could have affected our pre-emergent applications.  April was 5 degrees below normal for both average highs and lows, but it obviously did not reset the window for goosegrass germination.  March temperatures were average.  

We did make our pre-emergent applications on dates that I thought were appropriate.  Our first application of Prodiamine 65 WG (Resolute) on March 9th and 10th.  I did make one application at 1 lb. product per acre and another at 1.5 lbs. of product per acre.  We also made another application on April 10th mixed in with our fairway fertilizer application.  It was also Prodiamine (Barricade), applied at 150 lbs. per acre, the Prodiamine was a .5% product and if my math was correct it provided .75 lb. ai/Acre.  I did not notice a difference of control between the 1 lb. product per acre and the 1.5 lb. product per acre.  The goosegrass still came up heavy in areas.  I have already decided for next season, that I will be making the change to Oxadiazon for our pre-emergent.  It is much more expensive, but compared to the cost of post emergent herbicide applications, time it takes to apply and playability issues, it hopefully will be money well spent.

So how did we attempt to get rid of the goosegrass?  We first started doing some spot spraying with Foramsulfuron (Revolver) at 2 oz. per gallon and MSMA at 1 oz. per gallon mixed together.  We eventually went to straight MSMA at 1 oz. per gallon.  Both of these applications worked fairly well, but we were getting large areas of goosegrass on some holes, and Foramsulfuron was not cost effective at the 17.4 oz. per acre rate, and MSMA can not be broadcast over large areas.  Pictures below are goosegrass that had been treated with either the Foramsulfuron/MSMA mix or with MSMA alone.  

                   

In the past we have also tried a mixture of Foramsulfuron (16 oz. per acre) and Cargentrazone-ethyl/Sulfentrazone (Dismiss) (6 oz. per acre).  I had seen it suggested a few years back, we had mixed results, I blame most of it on the goosegrass becoming too mature and being late in the season before applying.  We did see good burndown of the weed, but we weren't sure of actual kill.  I have heard of people using one product and then coming back and using the other 10 days later and seeing better results.  We did not research it anytime after that, the cost of approximately $180 per acre was just too much for us to treat.

Then last year I heard of people using Topramezone (Pylex) on bermuda turf,  I thought that was crazy, since my first introduction to it was at the University of Missouri Field Days, where it was being used to remove bermuda from bentgrass fairways.  So I pulled up a label and found that it was indeed good to use on goosegrass, and one application would take care of the goosegrass, where three applications (or two if mixed with other products) would be needed to kill bermuda.  So I mixed up enough for 2 acres, and treated our cool season range tee, our cool season approaches, (we have 4 original greens which still have cool season approaches and collars).  I tried the .5 oz. per acre rate and low and behold we seemed to kill some goosegrass.  Below on the left is the collar of our chipping green, in the middle is where I sprayed a bunker edge, real interesting to me was the bermuda that was out in the bunker itself, and on the right some of the goose killed in one of our fairways.

                 

So this year when we had the issue again, I applied the Topramezone at the .5 oz. per acre rate with a methylated seed oil.  We had good results again.  The only issue was I would get asked constantly "what did you spray on the fairways" and "when will they look normal again".  I didn't really have an answer myself, I just knew that the bermuda would come back, so this year I documented it in pictures.

               

The picture on the left is on the day of application July 3rd.  The middle picture and the picture on the right shows the effects of the Topramezone 3 days after treatment on July 6th.  As can be seen, we are already starting to look at some ugly bermuda after only 3 days.

              

Now in the picture on the left was our 5th fairway which was taken on July 9th, six days after treatment, not pretty at all, in the middle picture we see the 5th fairway on July 16th, 13 days after treatment, (I should have got a little closer to take that picture), and on the right was the 4th fairway on July 19th, 16 days after treatment where it is only the goosegrass that is off color.  Best of all cost is fairly inexpensive, in the $30 per acre range.  I do need to search for options that might not off color the bermuda as much, I hear there are some strategies to do that.

Next on my radar is to treat my control patches of goosegrass in fairways, (otherwise know as misses), I am going to try applying Topramezone at the .25 oz. per acre rate, to see if the ghosting of the bermuda is less, and will that amount kill the goosegrass.  I am also looking to spray some of that tank on a practice green and the edge of another green on the golf course. I have taken the .5 oz. rate across our chipping green with no ill effects.  Of course the issue of goosegrass on greens will be for another post in hopefully the near future.

As always, thanks for reading!

Mel

Goosegrass sprayed, 6 DAT