Rain!

It is really wet out there. A lot of the bunkers are washed out and it's too wet to get any machines to the bunkers. Hopefully it starts to dry out soon and we can get to them.

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

Paint

We finished another application of pigment on the fairways this week. This time I added just a hint of paint to see if it will help hold color a little longer.

I'm not thrilled about the color....looks a little more blue than green, but I think it still works. It looked a lot better the first time because the grass wasn't completely dormant. I still have had a lot of positive feedback. It helps give some definition between fairways and rough.

The pigment runs about $1200 per application. If we were to paint it would be about $20k. The paint would hold up throughout the winter and have a more green color, but I figure we might need about 5 applications of pigment through the winter. $6K is a lot better than $20k.

Leaves and wet ground

With this recent nice weather and a little bit of wind, the course should be dry enough to get the blowers out on the course tomorrow. It's starting to dry down enough to do some work after 1.6" of rain.

We need to get them out there. Leaves are everywhere.


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

Blowing and Course Conditions

We blew out all the bunkers yesterday then raked them.  Today we focused on mowing greens, course set-up, and blowing leaves.  This time of year leaf cleanup can become very slow.  Right now it’s too wet to get the big blowers on the course.  With what looks like a rain-out on the horizon tomorrow, it could be some time before we can get the big blowers back on the course.  That also applies to carts.  This time of year there is no actively growing grass to suck up some the moisture and with our pottery clay soils, the water doesn’t go anywhere very fast. 

 

In the past, as soon as the Bermuda would go dormant, carts would be restricted to cart paths until spring.  Last year was the first year we tried to get carts out on a nice day when it was dry enough.  We will do the same this year, but it’s probably not going to be that often because of how wet the course stays in the winter.  It’s important to limit cart traffic on dormant grass.  If you don’t, it really delays greenup and spring turf conditions aren’t all that great before the turf really starts actively growing.  We did see some negative effects in the spring with greenup from running the carts in the grass so much last winter, but I think it’s important to let people off the cart paths in the winter when possible.  Hopefully it will keep people playing golf longer and allow members to get the most out of their golf membership.

 

The greens are looking and playing good.  They are not growing much at all this time of year.  We’re fertilizing them today before the rain hits tomorrow.  This will give them a little bit of a bump going into what looks like some warmer weather next week.  It’s a lot easier to keep them rolling good when temps stay above freezing at night.  We can’t mow them unless they are thawed and frost free….you have to be careful not to put any equipment on them when they are thawing. 

 

Brent Graham, CGCS

Director of Golf Maintenance

Two Rivers Country Club

1950 Two Rivers Rd.

Williamsburg, VA 23185

Office: 757-258-4606

Bgraham@tworiversclub.com

Governorsland.com

 

Leaf season

This is one of the most expensive things we do all year. Every day we are using about 40 gallons of diesel fuel and about 35 man hours just on leaves.

Liquid green.

We are trying a pigment on the fairways to make them look green longer into the winter. They are dormant for the most part, but we finished spraying them today to give them that green look. I like the results so far.

Greens

We verticut and topdressed greens on Monday. They look good and this will help to firm them up.

Greens

The greens have been rolling fantastic the last few weeks. Now that they have completely filled in on the edges, we started using a more aggressive growth regulator. This regulator keeps the speeds more consistent and is also used to prevent any poa germination on greens.

They are actually higher in height than they were a month ago. I am going to raise them again on Monday to make sure they don't get too fast.

You can see in the pics the darker green in the center of the green and the squared off areas near the edges that are a different color. We cut off the sprayer before it gets to the cleanup lap on the green and the Bermuda collar. This is to keep the edges growing and recovering, and also keep the regulator off the Bermuda. I think one of the main problems that all these golf courses in the area have been having in the spring with their bermudagrass collars is the overspray from growth regulators coupled with traffic (mowers). If we can eliminate one of the problems, which we try to do with the growth regulators, hopefully it won't be as severe in the spring.

The only disadvantage of doing this is the non-uniform color throughout the green. I think it's an acceptable trade off if we can keep the cleanup and the collar healthy throughout the year.

Good-by bermuda

We have had 2 good frosts on the Bermuda already. Kiss it goodby. The rough will be completely dormant in 2 weeks and the short grass will hold on a little longer but not much. We are going to spray fairways and add a pigment in the tank. This will give them some artificial color longer into the winter.

Green edges

We fertilized greens again last week. I put more of a fast release around the edges, and a controlled release on the rest of the greens. My intension is to give the edges a little more help growing and helping to completely recover after the summer. You can see a greener ring around the outside.

The greens are in fantastic shape and have been rolling really well. Gotta love this time of year.

I'm really looking forward to next year. We have the edges completely recovered and that will allow then to gain some maturity through the fall, winter, and spring. This should set us up nicely for next summer.

Brushing greens

The greens are still a little softer and slower due to all the rain we got on Wednesday. We brushed the greens in front of the mowers today. This helps to stand all the grass up before cutting, eliminating the amount of leaf blades that are laid over. This tends to slow the greens down a little the day we do it, but will result in true rolls and faster speeds in the next couple days.

Cart path on 14

We are working on fixing up the turf and drain along 14 cart path. There was a drop off and the drain along the concrete needed some love. We are trying to knock out a couple projects like this before the amigos leave for the year. It's a nice time of the year to do stuff like this because the grass isn't really growing that fast.

Greens

Topdressed and put down some Potassium and calcium on Monday. The topdressing helped firm up the greens and make it easier to keep them a little faster. The sand helps keep them from getting to puffy.

Greens

The greens are looking pretty good. There is still very little new root growth. They are still a little slow because I'm really trying to get them all grown in and full for the winter. The faster I can get these edges completely filled in, the sooner they start maturing making it easier to keep them consistently faster than what the currently are.

The increased amounts of fertilizer makes them grow a little faster than normal. I have them under growth regulation, but I haven't started using the stronger regulators because I don't want them on any of the edge areas that we are trying to grow in.

We mowed and rolled this morning but can only mow tomorrow because we have to mow out all the short grass. This doesn't leave us enough guys to roll. We are scheduled to double cut on Saturday and mow once on Sunday. They should keep decent speed through the weekend.

A light topdressing is needed to help them firm up and keep speeds up. We will be doing this on Monday.

Burn

The greens are a little speckled from the fert that we put down early in the week. This is just a tip burn that they will grow out of in the next 2 days. It's from the salts in the fertilizer....draws water out of the plant, much like it does in humans.

They look a lot better. That fert is kicking in and they are really filling in. Still a little slow from the extra growth and a little higher cutting height...when I say higher I mean 0.005" higher. That's how fine tuned the mowers need to be. I will bring them back down and speed them up middle of next week once they have recovered a little but from a tough week last week.

Greens

We are fertilizing greens with a bunch of different products today. We are also putting down a light dusting of topdressing. The greens have been a little thin and have really been beat up from all the mowing, rolling, and foot traffic the last week.

I intentionally kept them lean (low amounts of nitrogen) so they weren't flushing with growth, making it difficult to achieve the desired greens speeds for the Member Guest. It doesn't make them look exceptionally good, but they were rolling good.

I am really going to push them for the next two weeks to get them to fill in with the great weather we have coming with really cool nights. I want to get them filled in so they have the opportunity to mature going into next year.

This might slow them down a little for the next couple of weeks, but shouldn't be enough to make it that noticeable.

We are in good shape going into this fall. The greens will have the opportunity to continue to develop that much needed thatch layer that helps cushion the plant from mechanical damage. This was the first full year with the new greens and we faired much better than I expected.

Greens are like children....the older they get, the more tolerant they are to outside stresses.

Tournament prep

Just finished up for the evening. I brought the guys came back in this evening to mow all the greens, fairways, tees and approaches. The course is in really good shape for member guest.

Greens

The greens look a lot better this morning compared to the last few days. It's amazing what a few cool
Nights can do for them. It was 57 degrees this morning.

They are rolling around 11.5' for member-guest. I'll take that, especially with the weather we have had after aeration. Hot, humid and dry to deluge, wet, now back to dry. With the undulations in these greens...it should be fun.

Tifgrand

There is a different variety of Bermuda around 10 & 11. It is a new variety called Tifgrand. I love this grass. The color is awesome. I didn't put it around all the greens after the renovation because I didn't want the sod lines to be odious for years. It is a great looking grass that tends to handle the traffic better than the Tifway 419 that we have everywhere else.

Stuck head

I watered a few holes yesterday to water in some pre-emerg. Just watered each head for 4 min. This head stuck on all night. Going to have to replace it this morning. The approach and that right side rough is pretty wet.

Dialed in

Working on getting her dialed in for member guest. This is our busiest time of year. Not only are we getting everything prepped for tournament season, but we are also putting out all our winter pre-emerg for poa and fungicides for spring dead spot.

It's amazing how much more you can get done when working the whole crew until 5 or 6 everyday instead of 2:30-3:30 for a week plus.

The course is in really good shape , but the greens are still struggling a little. I didn't think they would be this far behind this time of year, but it's just the edges. The centers are in pretty good shape with the exception of #11. They are still rolling good - about 10.75'. These cool nighttime temps are going to help and we will give them a shot of fertilizer on Monday. I don't want to fertilize them before the tournament too heavy. You don't want them flushing with growth when you are trying to increase green speeds.

Temps

Look at those lows! That's root growing weather.

Greens edges

The greens are in pretty good shape but the edges are a little thin and yellowed out. Drought followed by heavy rain and then wet conditions are difficult to manage. We use wetting agents to hold water on these edge areas to help us keep them hydrated. During wet periods this keeps them too wet. The management practices that we utilize to keep grass in dry conditions, then end up hurting you during wet periods. I have made another application with a wetting agent that will help push the water through. It's a constant back and fourth.

Looking forward to get another year of maturity under our belt with these greens. The management will become more consistent once the greens become a little older.

Leaks

We have had quite a few leaks the last few weeks. All of the bad ones are repaired but still have a few weeping heads out there to fix. Working on this much irrigation while trying to prep for member guest is a killer. We don't have a huge staff, so anytime you have to allocate a couple of guys to irrigation, it takes away two guys from doing other stuff.

Still going

The never ending fairway mowing day. Started at 6:30 am and still going. Trying to finish the second cut.

Mowing!

We are really behind because of the rain. When we get that much rain it can put us behind, but when we get that much rain on a Monday....it is especially bad. Not to mention, this week and next are our busiest all year long. Prepping for member-guest then club championship.

We were finally able to get out on the fairways today to mow. It made an absolute mess with the clippings. That first pic is in the middle of the fairway...not the edge of the rough.

They finished mowing this morning and I had them just start over again going 18 back. After the second cut, they cleaned up pretty good.

Drain 11 green

We dug up the drain on 11 yesterday to make sure that it was working like it should. That's a deep hole!

It was working as it should...it just makes me feel a lot better knowing we don't have a clogged drain that's keeping the green wet.

A new fan for this green next year will do wonders.

Wet! Greens

These are some pictures from yesterday on 11. The greens were really wet and yellowed out. The 3" of rain was both good and bad.

There was some algae that popped up and the greens were yellowed out. The rain flushed the sodium out of the profile, it was acting as a natural growth regulator (and not a positive regulation) on the bentgrass, which was good, but it also pushed out a lot of the available nitrates through the soil, resulting in some yellowing for a few days. We are surging with growth right now even though they are under chemical regulation. For this reason, we mowed on Monday and Tuesday, but I needed to give them a break today. Normally we would mow everyday but they were looking wore down yesterday from all the rain and lack of sunlight.

11 was the only one that really looked bad. We ran the Subair quite a bit yesterday and today which helped dry it out.

They look 100% better today. Now that we are completely healed from aeration...They should start to get progressively faster every day going forward through the fall. I'm going to really start pushing them now that I know we are through the recovery.

Greens

The greens are loaded with sodium right now. The plant just does not operate correctly under these conditions. Hopefully this natural rainfall will build up and we will get some fresh, sodium free water in the greens. The salt is one of the reasons they are slow in some areas to recover from the aeration and a little puffy and slow.

I'm ready to get on with this fall - the greens are going to be sweet as soon as they recover from the big aeration and topdressing. Now I just need the weather to cooperate. This heat and humidity can go away.

I'm excited to see the current condition of the edges that we thought we would really struggle with this summer. They are in really good shape and will finally have the opportunity to mature. This will give them a head start going into what should be a really good year, next year. The greens are starting to mature and can start to handle more stress.

I was really careful with them this year, trying to take it easy on them their first full year of play. You wouldn't even believe me if I told you how much money, time and effort we put into these edges this year. It's nice to see the effort pay off. We could have done all of this and more to the old greens and they would have been really, really unhappy and sick right now with this amount of sodium and some late summer heat and humidity. It's easy to forget what the old ones were like (no one wants to forget more than me) but there is a huge difference between these greens and the old ones. Our greens speed never consistently fell below 8.5-9' all summer....even with the conservative management because of the relative immaturity. It wasn't uncommon for the old greens to roll less than 8' for extended periods of time in the summer.

The two pictures below are areas on 5 & 8 that had very little grass on them this time last year. It's great to see progression.

Look at that view

That would be a great picture without the spray hawk. For a bunch of guys that hate spraying, we sure spray a lot. The guys are good about it though. Would rather just go out and knock it out. Possibly the worst job on the course when it's hot out. Those spray pants are the hottest thing you could ever imagine wearing. We have a really solid crew on the course.

We were having issues with the sprayer this morning. The mix wasn't very happy coming out of the sprayer - kept getting clogged. The results....little streaky spray.

Dry and new equipment

There are some lines in the rough from the exhaust of one of the new tractors we just got in. The hot exhaust is angled out of the tractor onto the turf, burning the grass. You don't even know it's happening until a few days later when you start to see the tip burn. I'm currently working with the vendor to fix this issue. Shouldn't be a huge deal. The Bermuda will grow out of it in a week or so.

On another note....it's the driest stretch I've seen out here in 3 years. Really dry. Just look under the trees where we don't have irrigation. Irrigation coverage sticks out like a sore thumb now! I can't wait to shut this system down for the year. All the guys are sick of working on leaks and troubleshooting electrical and wiring issues. I know I'm ready to throw that wire tracer in the pond. We have been nonstop on irrigation work the last 2 weeks. Come on cool weather!

Greens and healing

The greens look ok....just ok.....nothing real great yet. We are a week from aeration and they are a little slow to recover. This crazy heat and humidity isn't helping, but more then anything, we need some fresh rainfall. The greens are loaded with sodium, and even though we flush them once in a while, you're still flushing with crappy water. The sodium really stunts the grass back this time of year with the shallow roots.

We are spraying another fungicide and some foliar fertilizer in the morning to try and get them kicking.

They are still going to be awesome this fall, just need a little rain. I'm going to start working them down tomorrow and if the weather cooperates, they should be rolling better by next week.

Irrigation

It's the driest I've seen it out here in a couple years. You can see the spots we have irrigation (working irrigation) and the spots we don't. The irrigation system is the most important capital asset we have. Not only do we use it to keep the grass alive, but we also use it to water in fertilizers and pesticides.

What????

Where is all this heat coming from? I'm really glad we aerified a week early now!

We need to fertilize greens to getting them going just a little. Might have to hold off with this heat. Was planning on spraying on Monday.

Greens

Mowed greens for the first time since Sunday. Greens turned out pretty good after the verticutting, aeration, topdressing, rolling, etc. we should be in good shape for the remainder of the fall. They will be putting like pool tables in a few weeks.

Unfortunately the heat is starting to set in for a few days. Figures....we don't get heat until we really beat them up. It will be important to keep them a little wetter than normal with this heat and having holes in them. The topdressing and holes will make them dry out really fast.

The greens are still a little soft. End of the summer, there are not any greens in this area that are firm...not any of the superintendents I've talked to say they have firm greens. This is from the typical root loss through a summer and having to keep more moisture in the top inch. You have to keep the water where the roots are. If that top inch, where the majority of the root mass is this time of year dries out, the plant is going to wilt and start to check out. As the humidity starts to drop and we develop more root mass, the greens will start to firm up.

Topdressing

We topdressed the back 9 yesterday for a second time. We had some equipment issues yesterday. After a repair we have to come back out and put more sand down. I want to make sure that we get most of the holes filled so we don't have to keep coming back and hitting them with light topdressings.

We finished the front after a difficult morning this am. Couldn't get all the sand to dry with the fog. We will have to come back on the front 9 greens this afternoon and roll the tire tracks out and blow any access sand. Ran out of time this morning.

I'll be glad when this week is over. Aeration puts us behind with all the rest of the normal course work. It's so labor intensive and takes a lot of guys, we end up behind on the mowing that we would normally complete on Monday and Tuesday.

Aeration

Knocking it out!