A Month!

Wow time sure does fly! Here I was hoping to make this a weekly thing. I blinked and missed a month. 

And a lot has happened in that month! For one, it has rained about every other day. Or so it seems. We aren't talking a drizzle either. I'm sure a toll is being taken due to all the moisture. What the extent of that toll will be probably won't be seen until July and August. But it is concerning. The low areas are paying a price as we speak. Those areas that were damaged or thinned due to the moisture last year are continuing to have issues or sustain further damage. The greens that are shaded and tend to stay wet, #4, #6, and #14 for example, are definitely showing the signs of having sustained long stretches of excess moisture. Mostly thinning at this point. The putting green has also started to thin, which is probably as much an excess traffic issue as moisture. We have the First Tee, the lesson clinics, and outing putting contest all taking a toll on the PG.

The tees are filling in nicely! Since my last blog we aerated and seeded them again. They are moving in the right direction and should continue to improve. Since last summer, we have aerated and seeded the tees three times. 

Pic of #17 tee ... 

The greens healed nicely from aeration. Once we got a few warm days they really took off. They are in great shape for the most part. The main issues are the overall thinning and damage around the cup due to the excess moisture, especially on those mentioned above. Hopefully with a break in the weather, if we get one, we can make some ground back before the truly stressful weather arrives.

Pic of #17 green ... 

The irrigation system is fired up and charged. We haven't needed it, but it is available. In fact, we haven't needed it since the first week of August 2018, which is pretty amazing. We have gone through all of the greens, approaches and tees. We have some small issues here and there but nothing major. 

We did fix the valve that ran from the main pipe to the tee on #10. That tee had not run since I have been here and apparently had not run in the few years prior to my arrival. Since the snap valve for #9 green was so close and the tee so small, it had just been hand watered. It was the last of the 25 plus "Irrigation Issues" list I was handed by Kyle G. when I arrived. Some of which, like this one, had been allowed to linger for years. Once we dug it up I understood a little better why it had been allowed to linger. It was deep ( if you saw the hole you saw how deep it was ) and had PVC going to metal on one end with a 2.5 inch gate valve on the other to a flow span going out. The flow span is what failed, probably due to the torque of the pipes not being straight. I'll be honest, I'm shocked our fix didn't leak, but knock on wood, so far so good. 

The fix on #10 tee only fixed two more sprinklers. However, considering where we were three years ago, it was a pretty big accomplishment. When I arrived in February of 2016, we had three tees, two entire fairways, two greens, and an approach not running at all. Nothing. Nada. Along with who knows how many individual non functioning sprinklers. So it has been a lot of work to fix the "list" as well as everything else that failed throughout the three seasons. 

So that is what is happening in the Cranbury Maintenance Department!

Off and running!

Good Friday morning! Things are full speed ahead at this point. And we are finally seeing some green up and growth out on the course. 

The greens are healing well from aeration. The cool spring has kept growth to a minimum, which in turn slowed the healing process. This week though we started to make some headway. We switched to the "good" greens mower this morning, which puts a period on the aeration process. 

We've also had some great seed germination in the tees as well as the aerated and seeded fairways. Hopefully we can get some of these areas established and filled in before they become flooded again ( likely tonight unfortunately ). The constant rainfall isn't helping considering 90% of these areas ended up like this because of last years rain. Picture below shows the seed coming up in the aeration holes. This is the low area on #10 that was damaged last summer and fall. 

At this point all of the fresh course accessories are out. We have all new flag sticks, flags, cups, and bunker rakes. The ball washers as well as the fairway and par three tee yardage plates were given a facelift. 

Have a good weekend!

What A Week!

Wow. What a week. Greens aerification is complete and things are really getting into gear. And it just keeps raining!!

Greens aerification went about as good as I could have hoped, given the hurdles we faced. The plan was to do a core aerification with 1/2 inch tines. However as last week wore on and the forecast for Friday to Tuesday got more wet, I had 5/8 inch solid tines two day shipped to us. I knew we were already wet heading into the weekend. With rain forecasted on Friday night, Sunday night, and showers, clouds, drizzle for Monday and Tuesday, forging ahead with the coring tines didn't make much sense. The greens would have been too soft for the core harvester and we don't have the personnel to shovel. Plus the plugs wouldn't have dried out very well, if at all.  

Here is what we came out to on Monday morning ... 

Not ideal to say the least. Despite the weather we went to work. We had to make an adjustment after the first green when it was clear that they were too soft to be punched and top dressed after. So we started top dressing before punching them, which worked out fine. As for the top dressing, I knew given the wet greens and wet sand, that putting a bunch of top dressing down was a recipe for a headache. I knew going in that our best chance of doing a decent job getting the top dressing down while also having decent playing conditions was to do the top dressing a little at a time. We ended up top dressing three to four times between Monday and Wednesday. Dragging and blowing it in each day. This actually went better than I would have expected. I'd estimate we got 90% of the holes filled when all was said and done. And by Wednesday afternoon, the greens were very playable and rolling well. We also top dressed approaches as we went.

#4 with the first coat of top dressing ... 

So the process ended up looking something like this:

1. Top dress
2. Aerify
3. Drag
4. Blow
5. Seed
6. Roll
7. Cups

Wednesday afternoon we did our final drag and blow. Thursday morning we sprayed them with fertilizer to help the healing process. Friday morning we mowed them for the first time, mainly picking up sand. 

It is Saturday morning now and in a shocking turn of events, it rained last night and this morning ... But this rain is a good thing for the greens. I did go out and take a look and took some pictures that I'll put below. On top of all of this, we did also get our first fairway mow in. Didn't cut much but cleaned them up some and put some stripes out there for you. Hopefully the rain is done and we can have a good weekend!

#15 green this morning ... 

I'm pretty happy all things considered. Thanks to the crew for putting up with a difficult few days and getting the job done. 

Welcome to April!

Wow. Time sure does hum right along. And we are busy!

Fairway and approach aerification started this week. We are core aerifying all of the fairways and approaches. We are also seeding all of the approaches and any thinned or damaged fairway areas. We are a little over halfway finished. Once we are done coring, we are going back over the approaches with the same solid tines we used on tees. After which we seed them again. 

Pic of #10 fairways punched. 

The solid tine aerification and seeding of the tees was completed late last week. We will now wait about a month and do a core aerification, as well as put down more seed. 

Pic of tee post punch and seed. 

Greens aerification is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. The weather is not looking great with an 80% to 90% chance of rain Monday morning and a 50% chance on Tuesday morning. And with rain also likely tomorrow, it seems we may be battling uphill. Hopefully the forecast improves ... 

Greens condition and PG detail ...

Looks like a nice weekend ahead! The greens are about as good as I could hope for right now. We implemented a program last fall that seems to have really paid dividends. They looked good all winter and look terrific right now. Pics from yesterday ( 3/28 ) ... 

We put out the freshly painted putting green area signs and accessories this week. We also painted the flagpole, hoping to spruce things up a bit. 

Was a busy week! We've started mowing rough today. Concentrating on the areas directly around greens and fairways, mainly as another way to clean up from winter. We also mowed tees, greens, collars, and approaches. Traps are being spun again today in preparation for the weekend. Hopefully the rain holds off and we get two nice days. Enjoy your weekend and thanks for playing a Cranbury!

Tees ...

Tees probably ended 2018 as our biggest turf issue. They have three pretty big strikes going against them, especially in years like 2018: shade, poor drainage, and lack of size. Throw in the fact that a lot of them have trees growing in close proximity and they are a constant struggle. 

We have shade issues to some degree on the majority of the tees but three, six, eight, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen are the biggest problems. The shade really limits the ability of the turf to fill in and recover. Even if we can get decent turf stands established on them in the spring, they slowly decline all season. The fact that many of them have trees growing in close proximity doesn't help either, think three, six, twelve, and fifteen white. Both the turf and the trees are fighting for the same nutrients and moisture. 

The tees also tend to drain poorly. In 2018, this undoubtedly was our biggest issue. It was very evident on number one at the end of last season. The front half, which is a bit higher and dryer, was still in good shape, while the back half where the water tended to end up was thinned out quite a bit. 

As if those issues weren't enough, the tees are very small. We only spray two acres. Which means actually turf area is probably closer to one and three quarters. On an eighteen hole golf course with six par threes, that is not a lot. In fact, it is not nearly enough. 

To sum it up we are trying to grow turf that is competing for nutrients and moisture in a difficult growing environment while having to withstand and recover from traffic. The odds are not in our favor. 

So what do we do to help our odds? Well for starters we try to limit traffic in the late fall, winter, and early spring. In the winter of 2015 and 2016, we didn't use the tees at all. You'll remember that we were asking people to tee off from in front of the actual boxes or from the yellow boxes where it made sense. The last two winters we either used one set of markers on the very fronts of the white boxes or had no markers at all, allowing you to pick your teeing areas and spread the traffic out instead of wasting teeing areas before the season. This winter we had to deviate from those plans a bit and went with two sets of tees but tried to keep the traffic confined to the front area of the boxes. 

We have also been aggressively aerating and seeding. Last spring we did an early solid tine and seeding of the tees followed up with a core aerification and seeding a month or so later. We will employ the same strategy this year. 

And last but not least, if you played here the last three winters, you've probably noticed the turf covers on the worst of the tees. This year we covered the box shared by two and eighteen as well as twelve, fourteen, and sixteen. The covers delay dormancy, protect the turf from the cold winter temps, and hopefully help "start up" the turf earlier in the spring while the traffic is limited. All in an attempt to extend the time the turf has to grow, recover, strengthen and fill in. 

Yesterday we picked up the covers and mowed the tees for the first time. We also started the solid tine aerification and seeding process. 

Pics below show fourteen tee covered as well as sixteen tee post cut. If you look closely at the picture of sixteen tee you can see faint lines of turf. Those are last years aerification holes filled with turf from seeding. 

Spraying season 2019 ...

Time flies huh? Hard to believe we are spraying already. That being said, despite the lack of snow this winter, we are about two weeks behind last year weatherwise ( based on growing degree days ). Based on my eyes, I noted a noticeable green up on February 28th last year. I didn't notice the same green up until March 15th this year. If you remember we had a very warm February last year. We aerified tees in February and made our first spray on March 6th. And then it seemingly snowed all of March! Like I said last time, this job is always interesting to say the least.

The spray yesterday was to minimize and suppress the seedheads that the poa will try to develop in the coming weeks. Doing so will improve the putting surface and save the plant some energy and resources. Unless you have snow mold issues coming out of winter this spray generally kicks off the spraying season for those of us managing poa greens in the northeast and many other areas of the country.

I've walked on most the greens the last two days and we seem to be disease free. We also seemed to made it through the cold months with very little winter damage. The swale in the back of #1 green may have some small spots of winter kill, but otherwise we are in good shape.

Some pics attached of before and after as well as a sprayed green ... oh hey, it is raining again!