Mowing greens and other stuff

We double cut the greens this morning. This helped clean the greens up a little and get them rolling a little better.

The cool nighttime temps have definitely helped the greens, but I think they have hit their limit this year. They are still very young and they are showing some stress from all of the traffic. They're also not recovering as quickly as I would have hoped, especially with these favorable temps. I think this is from the amount of traffic that these greens have had on them in the last month or so. We have been increasing the frequency of fertilizer and chemical applications (un-budgeted expenses) to try to increase the rate of recovery. Once we get through aeration on the 19 and 20th I'm hoping to see some quick recovery and lightning quick speeds upon aeration recovery. The greens I'm referring to are basically #3 through #15. There are a couple strong greens in that group (4,8,9,10) and 16-18,1,2,PG1 are in amazing shape and could take just about anything I this at them at this point. This just shows you the importance of air flow, limited shade, and big areas for traffic dispersion. The holes that have this are near perfect....the holes that don't, aren't. This is just one of the battles that we have to deal with on a yearly basis in Williamsburg....and trying to grow new greens that aren't even a 11 months old yet tend to magnify these problems.

Beetles

There are a bunch of European Chafer beetles on the greens. They have been digging into the greens the last week or so. I made an insecticide application last week and watered it it (you water it in for pests that feed or live below the grass) with limited success. We made an additional insecticide application with our foliar fert and fungicide on Monday. Smoked em! Most of them should be picked up by the greens mowers this morning.

Green speeds

The greens were extremely slow today. We topdressed yesterday and they looked like they still had a bunch of sand on them yesterday, even after watering in the sand. For that reason I made the decision not to mow greens today.

After looking at them this morning.....I made the wrong decision. They grew a lot last evening - more than I thought they would. I guess that cool weather and the foliar fertilizers that we sprayed kicked them a little harder than I thought they would. I really wish I would have mown greens today but what's done is done. We will mow tomorrow and slowly start taking advantage of these cool nights. Over the next few weeks we will start to increase the speeds. It was very important to be overly careful with the greens the last couple weeks of July. They are so new and susceptible to wear and traffic, I just wanted to make sure we got through this summer without any significant damage.

Brent Graham, CGCS
Director of Golf Maintenance
Two Rivers Country Club
1950 Two Rivers Rd.
Williamsburg, VA 23185
Cell: 757-592-0840
Office: 757-258-4606
Bgraham@tworiversclub.com
Governorsland.com

Topdressing Greens

We topdressed greens today. I watered in the sand but there is some still on the greens. This topdressing will help the greens recover faster, smooth them out, firm them up, and help to eventually speed the greens up.

Because of this topdressing we will not be mowing greens tomorrow. I am going to give them another day to grow through the sand. If we mow the greens with the sand on them, it dulls the movers very quickly, and these dull mowers can do more harm than good when it comes to plant health (like getting cut with a dull knife).

We have been doing all of the light topdressing by hand with spreaders and bagged sand. This is extremely labor intensive and the bagged sand is expensive, but this is something that I decided we need to do this year to prevent the new greens for having that increased traffic from the topdresser and the tire marks that come with it. The new greens are still "setting up" and putting equipment like this tends to do more harm than good. This time of year I try to do everything possible to eliminate additional stress.

Feet

Sorry I forgot about the weekly pick up your feet post. Here it is......

All things considered, after 2 full course shotguns this weekend for the Member-Member, everyone did a really good job limiting foot traffic on the greens. I thought they would look a lot worse after this tournament from all the traffic, but they did ok. Good job gentlemen.

Greens with new fans

I'm starting to notice that the interior greens that have the new fans are recovering from traffic much better than the greens with old fans. Our regular bad greens like 5 &14 are doing much better that the greens that older, smaller fans (6,7,13)

In a couple of months I will start working on budgets for 2014 and at this point I think I will re-arrange our equipment purchases to make room for 3 new fans on 6,7,13. I always knew that they made a big difference, but never thought the difference between the new and old fans would be that apparent.

Fairways

We god all the approaches and fwys cut in the late morning/afternoon before the member-member. They are starting to get firm and dry. I haven't watered them yet - I'm looking for them to really dry out. We could all use a little more ball roll. They don't have that lush, green look because I haven't been watering, but I think the playability is much better on them when they are dry.

Member-Member

We got an early start this morning to make the 9am shotgun. The greens look great this morning even after the really busy day yesterday. It's amazing what a couple of cool nights can do for the greens. We will be mowing and rolling this morning so they should be a little quicker that they have been the last few weeks.

No mows

We are in the process of mowing all the no mows on the course. Most are done at this point. We still have all of the river holes to do. They were getting pretty weedy. I got most of them sprayed before we mowed them and will finish spraying next week.

Bunkers

We didn't have enough guys to rake bunkers this morning. That's why it's always important to take your time raking after a shot. Raking bunkers is usually the first thing I cut out in the morning if we are running short on guys. This usually happens about once a week and usually on Fridays when we have to get everything mown out for the weekend.

Greens

The greens got a little roughed up yesterday from all the traffic. We just rolled greens this morning instead of mowing so we could have enough guys to get all the rest of the mowing done.

They are a little on the wet side from the 0.2" of rain yesterday and I had to run some irrigation on them yesterday morning to water in some pesticide. We applied a fungicide for soil/root diseases, an insecticide for some of the beetles that we are seeing on the greens, some Calcium, manganese, and a wetting agent to help with localized dry spots.

It is nice to have some cool mornings like we have had the last couple of days.

That hole in the middle of 9 fairway

Here is a pic of an irrigation leak we had in the middle of 9 fairway. This 2" tee was leaking. Most of the leaks that we have is 2" pipe - that's all the laterals connecting the head to the mainline.

Bentgrass Collars

We are working on sodding some of the bentgrass collars that are in rough shape. Starting on 13 and will move to 12 next. This is the reason we invested in a nursery green (next to 1 green). The nursery is most important in the first year of the greens when we knew we would have some issues like this in our first year. We will pull a bunch of sod off of it this year, and then completely reseed the nursery this fall.

Greens

The greens are starting to look a lot better. It's amazing how these greens can recover so quickly. The old ones would decline and stay declined. We do still have a few weak greens out there like 5,7,13 but they are nothing to worry about at this point.

We have made good progress on the Bermuda surrounds. As you can see in this picture the sod is starting to take hold and they are finally filling in. We still have to do the front of 11, but other than that I am getting happier with these areas.

Geese on course.

Ok....so I knew that the geese were able to fly and it seemed like they just didn't care about Duff anymore. They would run into the lake and swim in circles away from him. We used to have a remote control boat that I would use to drive them back to the dog, but the boat died and I haven't really needed it the last few years.

I just invested in a new remote boat to drive them out of here. I still had to get a battery for the boat and was waiting it to come in before I could use it. The battery comes in tomorrow, and needless to say I was really excited to send the dog after them and have Ryan put the boat in and drive them out in a heartbeat. That would be exciting to see since the geese have been completely destroying #4 green every night no matter how much I chase them with the dog.

All that being said....they were all gone this morning....every single one of them - except for one that I think has something wrong with it. It was great to see, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a little disappointed that I couldn't get em with the boat and the dog. I'm sure I will get my chance later this year. They never really leave for good.



Brent Graham, CGCS
Director of Golf Maintenance
Two Rivers Country Club
1950 Two Rivers Rd.
Williamsburg, VA 23185
Cell: 757-592-0840
Office: 757-258-4606
Bgraham@tworiversclub.com
Governorsland.com

Greens

The greens didn't look good yesterday afternoon. They really took it on the chin after a hot day with a lot of play. I know it wasn't a real popular decision to close a few days this week to limit play but it was most definitely the correct decision. 5 and 7 are now the worst greens - still fine but showing some stress. You have to think, it's a lot for young greens to handle. The traffic, hot temps, humidity, all the rainfall, etc are all things that work against them in their first year of existence.

They do look a little better this morning - even after a 82 deg low. The wind was blowing all night which really helped things out. More air movement = more ET (how the plant breathes).

Not good

It's never a good sign when you get into the truck at 5am and its over 80. If there is one thing greens don't like in our area is nighttime temps this high.

Wear/Traffic

You can see the impact of foot traffic on the collars in this picture on 9. The only thin area on the green and collar is right where everyone walks off the green.

The greens look good this morning. They are very soft and very slow. The 90% humidity makes everything soft, slow and sticky. I don't think there are any greens new or old that could roll fast right now in this area....and still live through the summer. It looks like once we get through today and tomorrow we will get a little bit of a break. It will be interesting to see how they respond today to a very hot day and a full tee sheet until around 2:00 pm. Make sure you pick those feet up!!

Wet area 14

This wet area on 14 fairway has been here for a while. Whenever we have a wet year this fairway has some weird wet spots that start showing up. I think there may be some natural springs that act up when we have unusually wet periods. I can't count the number of times that I have dug up spots in this fairway looking for leaks, only to find nothing.

It's hard to isolate the irrigation on this hole (to eliminate the possibility of this being a leak) for any length of time because the main artery for the golf course irrigation flows through this hole ( a 14" main line). If you shut that down it screws up the pressure on the rest of the course and we need water on that hole for our afternoon watering.

I really just need to put some new drainage on this fairway ASAP.

Roots!

We were working on some plugging on #5 today and this was one of the plugs we took off the nursery. The interior holes are holding their own and the greens look ok, but the river greens, 1, 9, nursery, etc are absolutely perfect. There's something to be said about having this kind of root mass this far into the summer. It just shows you the difference that shade, airflow, and foot traffic make in regards to plant health. Ryan has a reason to smile holding this plug...and it's not because we were plugging collars in what felt like 115 degree heat.

Nighttime lows

And this is the reason it was a good idea to close a couple of days this week. At 9:30 pm the temp is 85 with a real feel of 96! Lows like this don't give the greens a chance to recover from the traffic and stress of a day. Mature, older greens can handle these stresses much better than our new, young greens.

One benefit of these temps,maybe the only positive of temps these high, is that the Bermuda looks great. It is growing like crazy right not, which doesn't make it easy for clipping removal, but when we can keep up with the mowing the turf looks fantastic.

The greens are listening

The greens looked pretty wore out this morning after all the rain and the big shotguns this weekend. Now, after looking at them in the evening...they look much better. We just need to get through this week.

It's good to see the greens respond to some defensive actions like raising the height of cut, venting with solid tines, light topdressing, light fertilization, chemical applications, etc. We used to do all of these things with our old greens, working our butts off, only to see little or no response and a continued decline. It's refreshing to see that our hard work is now able to yield results with the new greens. This is with very young greens, I expect that they will get even better with time.

Course closure

We have had a string of terrible weather lately. It appears that this might be the first year on record that we have not had to turn on the well for irrigation water. Saturday with the two afternoon thundershowers, followed by sunny, hot, humid weather is the worst weather for bentgrass in this area. Currently the greens look OK and are holding their own. The collars are struggling in some areas on the interior holes but that is expected with the wet weather and the new greens (new collars usually struggle for the first year or so after a rebuild). We are in complete defense mode right now. The height of cut on the greens was raised, fungicide intervals have been shortened, Subair is being used to help the drying process, and we put some holes in the greens to help them breathe through all this wet weather. Like I said, they are doing OK now, but this next week will be a turning point in the year with the forecasted temperatures. We need everyone to remember that these greens are still babies (a 10 month old) and need to be treated as such through the most stressful parts of the year. Our goal should be to do everything in our power to survive and remain healthy through this first year, then we can try to get into some consistency once the greens are fully matured.

We will be closing this Tuesday and Thursday when the forecasted highs are in the high 90's and more importantly, the forecasted lows are around 80. Anytime these lows are this warm, the plant never has a chance to recover from the stress of the day. All the rainfall has really softened up the greens making them extremely susceptible to decline from foot traffic. Friday's temperature is a little higher than Tuesday and Thursday, but barring any more rain, we should be a little dryer by the time we get to that point.

It needs to be communicated that we are not closing due to current problems, but instead to help prevent future problems. Anything we can do to eliminate traffic on wet greens during the hottest times of the year will greatly benefit these new greens.

We have to remember that these greens had a slow grow-in due to the miserable winter and the cold March that we had. We were able to open on time but it was stated that if we get into some bad weather patterns we may have to limit the amount of play – I think we are at that time and could protect our investment by closing a couple of days.

We're almost out of the woods and the greens are maturing nicely…looking forward to this fall!

Yet again

Here is a pic of the guys this morning fixing washout in the bunkers. We got a total of an inch yesterday with a several afternoon thunder showers.

We need to go through and adjust the amount of sand we have in the bunker faces. We just haven't had the time - and I'm glad we haven't. What's the point of wasting all that labor, just to have them wash out again. When you're in a hurry like we were this morning to sat ahead of the first group (which was a hole behind at the time of this pic) there's not a whole lot of time for fine tuning. I'm sure we will start to dry down at some point and loose the rain events.

Greens

We aerified a few of the weaker greens with some larger solid tines. This will help them get through the hot, wet weather.

We sprayed a fungicide after aerating. This fungicide went down only 5 days after our last application. Usually these applications last 14 days, but not is this weather. The rain just keeps on coming.

Aprons

The Bermuda aprons around the outside of the greens are looking a little better - it looks like all the attention that we are giving them is starting to pay off. I have another fert application planned this week with a combo of quick release and slow release fert. This will continue to help these areas recover from the reconstruction blues.

The bent collars are still struggling on some holes, especially the interior holes. This is another growing pain common with new greens. The greens are still in really good shape with the exception of a few spots on 5, 13, and 14. We will start plugging these small areas out this week. This summer is moving along and we will be out of the fire sooner than later.

This is the longest we have ever gone into the year without using the well for the irrigation water. Usually we average a couple million gallons every May and June - 0.0 this year so far.

Brown Patch

I just couldn't resist driving past this G-Land yard. This has been perfect weather for brown path this year in the fescue. If you have it.....your not alone.

I had to take a pic of this yard in particular because of the textbook look of the patches. When you take pathology in college they always show pictures of these perfect examples, then when you get out in the field, the diseases never appear that obvious. This was that rare exception.

Why me?

It's a Monday and it's raining again. I swear the next Monday that we get where it's not raining, I'm buying a lotto ticket.

This is killing us. We really need to spray greens again today and the fungicide has to dry on the plant before getting any water.

Subair on 5

Yesterday I had the Subair running on 5. It was blowing hot air into the drain tiles (which are cool) and when the air is going through the tiles it cools down and is forced up through the soul profile. This delivers more oxygen and some cool air to the root system during the hot weather.

Fairways

A couple of the fairways have a scalped look to them. These were the ones that we had to wait the longest to mow after all the rain last week. It scalped them out a little and then we had to spray them (they were a week over due) which also didn't help the situation. They should kick back in less than a week.

Mowing

Yesterday and today it has dried out enough to get all the short grass mowed. The rough is going to be the challenge. With all the rain early in the week, then 4th of July preparations, and an 18 hole shotgun on Friday, it's a lost cause until this weekend. I was hoping to wait until Monday - working the guys full days on the weekend really sends my labor through the roof, but I don't think I have an option this weekend.

Once we do mow it is going to make an absolute mess. I have raised the rough mowers 1/2" to compensate for the growth and hopefully decrease the amount of scalping and clippings. After we get it mown I will lower it back down a 1/4". Throughout the season we have to gradually increase the length of the rough to compensate for growth, density, and growth characteristics later in the year. I start the rough out at just above an inch and usually by the end of the year it will be at 1.5-1.75". I try to keep it as short as possible as long as I can.

Rain & fungus.

Hopefully the rain will stop for a little while. It doesn't look like we will be able to mow rough this week. That will make a mess of the rough next week once we are able to mow.

I hope everyone has their fungicide down on their lawns. With this incredible amount of rain and the temps that we have coming in next week, brown patch is about to go crazy. If you don't have it down and need some, we have it at the shop for sale.

Brent Graham, CGCS
Director of Golf Maintenance
Two Rivers Country Club
1950 Two Rivers Rd.
Williamsburg, VA 23185
Cell: 757-592-0840
Office: 757-258-4606
Bgraham@tworiversclub.com
Governorsland.com

Bunkers

My boys raking bunkers+edges to get ready for play on Tuesday. We had some washout, which made bunkers a pretty hard job this morning.

The amigos don't complain, they just go out there and hump it in the hot, humid weather - no questions asked. I can never give them enough hours or work - gotta love that dedication. I love those guys. They truly take the course to another level.

Follow up pic of spraying greens.

Surrounds and growth regulators

We have been struggling with growing in the Bermuda around greens for a couple of different reasons, one of which includes the higher rates of growth regulators that the new greens require. The new sod around the greens doesn't handle the traffic and growth regulators as well as established grass.

We have been sodding the worst areas - which is turning out really nicely. This picture shows the impact of the growth regulators on the Bermuda grass. The light squares are the overspray of the growth regulators off the greens.

We have started a different spray approach on the greens. We started cutting the sprayer off early so no over spray goes onto the Bermuda. The down side to this is that not all the green gets sprayed, and most of the time we mix that growth regulator with a fungicide. Now with this approach we have to separate the applications into two separate sprays. Not real fun when we are spraying greens by hand. It is a hot, sweaty, dirty, nasty job that we now have an additional time in a two week period, but if it helps bring back these surrounds it will be worth it.

I will follow this post with another pic of Garrison and Mike spraying greens without any spray going into the Bermuda.

Venting greens...again

Here is a pic of us venting greens again. In the background Ryan is setting up the Subair to suck some of the moisture out if the green. The venting helps the greens to breathe with all this rain we have been getting.

Rain followed by hot, humid weather in this area is a worst cast scenario for guys growing bentgrass in the Mid-Atlantic in the summer.

In June we got 14" of rain, not counting what we 2.5" we got the last couple days. With the monthly averages for our area this amount of rain will carry us through the end of September. Food for thought.

Rain

It's pouring outside right now and it's Monday. No Bueno. Mondays are critical to us getting all the mowing and maintenance done for the week. When we loose Mondays or even portions of Mondays, it really puts us behind for the rest of the week.

Brent Graham, CGCS
Director of Golf Maintenance
Two Rivers Country Club
1950 Two Rivers Rd.
Williamsburg, VA 23185
Cell: 757-592-0840
Office: 757-258-4606
Bgraham@tworiversclub.com
Governorsland.com