What's With the Plastic??

I talk a lot about the golf course and how much work we do to keep it beautiful and playable, but I don't very often talk about the landscaping at the club that so many have grown to love.  It is entirely possible that the reason I don't talk much about the landscaping is because I don't have to think about it very often... I've got Carley for that.  Carley, as many of you know, is responsible for (among other things) all landscaping at the club.  She works incredibly hard to make sure I don't have to think about it.  This spring she's drawing some attention with her "green" weed control efforts.  She has selected several flower beds that have shown to have weed problems and sealed them in plastic.  This seal will effectively sterilize the top few inches of soil (where the annual weed seeds are) and greatly reduce the need for in-season weed removal.  We are hoping this experiment will prove successful and will free Carley's time this summer to tend to her many other tasks.

A Little Bit Closer...

Although we began today with a good freeze, temperatures rebounded quickly and the guys were able to get out and make some progress.  Today marks the third greens mowing of the year (not including the rolling done prior to mowing) and the day we started in on bunkers. 

Steve Horsley mows #10 green

Carl, Alan, and Kenny get a bunker ready for the season

Over the next several days we will be working through the bunkers, working on general cleanup and Carley will be hard at getting her beds ready for the spring.

Congratulations Carley!!

The Crew had the privelage this past weekend of watching one of our own tie the knot.  Carley, our Club Horticulturist/ Arborist was married on March 6th to Marshall Cresap.  It's not everyday that our crew dresses up in shirts and ties, let alone wedding dresses, so I couldn't resist the photo op!  Our congratulations to Carley and Marshall and here's to a long life together!

Wild Goose Chase??

Normally we try to avoid a wild goose chase, but with Lucy, we seek them out!  As is normal for this time of year, we have a flock of non-resident geese that have taken a liking to our #13 pond.  I haven't actually counted how many are in the flock, but I've been told there are about 70 individuals.  While the geese are a nuisance and messy, all but about four will soon move on and not return as they are likely in migration and just "stopping by" to use our open water.  Lucy has been working the flock and keeping them on the move the last few days, just making sure they don't get too comfortable at CCC! We recently received our 2010 Nuisance Animal Removal Permit that allows us to legally disrupt the nest of any mating pair that decides to call CCC home.  The DNR strongly encourages property managers in urban areas to aquire this type of permit and take measures to not allow nesting.  If geese are allowed to nest and hatch goslings, those goslings will likely attempt to nest in an area very near the spot they learned to fly.  Just a few nesting pairs can reproduce into a very large resident flock if measures are not taken to control the population increase.  I am hoping that Lucy's work will prevent any new pairs from nesting at CCC and possibly prevent our perennial nesting pair to move elsewear. 

During my trips around the course with Lucy this spring we not only have been chasing geese, but have been keeping an eye on a hawk who has been on our property for some time now.  This hawk is obviously quite mature and well fed as he is a very large bird.  He has kept a close eye on our wearabouts also, frequently appearing in nearby trees when Lucy is out working the geese.  We don't get too many opportunities to view wildlife other than squirrels here at CCC because of the urban nature of our location, so watching this hawk hunt has been quite a treat!

In Like a Lamb?

I seem to be spending a lot of time lately listening to my kids talking about how March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, but today seems more "lambish" than "lionish".  Either way, the passing of February into March does something to me.  It means the beginning of the NCAA Tournament ("March Madness" if you will), the gradual melting of snow cover, and the subsequent influx of last year's laborers checking in to find out when we will need them back.  Today seems to encompass all three of the aforementioned milestones:  we spent lunch determining that my assistant Mick will be handling the annual NCAA pool this year, one of my seasonal guys showed up at the shop to tell me how "ready" he was to get back to work, and I got a chance to drive the course and actually look at turf for a change.  What I found was predictable based on the winter we've had this year.

Based on data from the Illinois State Climatologist Office, we have had measureable snow cover since Christmas.  Around Central Illinois, that is a long time.  Any time there is snow cover for that long (65 days to be exact) us turf managers start to worry about snow mold.  During my drive around the course today, I confirmed my suspicion that snow mold will indeed rear its ugly head in 2010.  My observations were as follows:  Our greens (at least the sections that aren't still covered with snow) are generally clean.  I found a few small patches of what I believe to be Pink Snow Mold.  I am not terribly worried about the greens.  Our fairways and tees did not fare so well however.  I noticed areas of fairways, mostly areas with the highest Poa annua content, had multiple patches of most likely Gray Snow Mold (see top picture).  Gray Snow Mold forms under snow cover and has a Gray ring of mycellium around a dead patch of turf.  Gray Snow Mold is very familiar to turf managers up north of us, but generally is not much of an issue here in Central Illinois.  We usually do not have enough snow cover to allow its development.  Pink Snow Mold is more common, but historically has not been a big issue at CCC.  In addition to the Gray Snow Mold on our tees and fairways, we have a "patch disease" (see lower picture) that is present on some of our collars.  I will be doing a bit more observing to diagnose the exact fungus responsible, but it seems to be rather superficial in nature.  I will be watching all of these diseases in the coming week or so to determine if a fungicide treatment is necessary.

2010 Golf Industry Show

Working in the Midwest affords me the pleasure of having some “down time” in which to work on things I don’t necessarily have much time for in the summer. Recently, I have been working on some continuing education by attending the annual Golf Industry Show in San Diego, California. This year (due to the locale) my family chose to attend with me, although they opted out of education and visiting the trade show and chose relaxation and visiting the beaches instead! Smart family if you ask me…

I didn’t get to frequent the beach or partake in the relaxation as much, but instead furthered my education and spent a day at the trade show learning about some of the industry’s newest innovations. I attended three seminars that seemed very appropriate for upcoming events at the club. The first seminar was about planning and costing a major project on the golf course. As many of you know, 2010 will be a year of “planning” rather than “doing” on the golf course. We will be working with a golf course architect to come up with solutions to the various challenges we face on the golf course. This planning will give us a blueprint as to how to most effectively and economically tackle these challenges. In the seminar, much time was devoted to how to effectively organize a project and ensure its success. I greatly look forward to the planning process that will happen in 2010.

The second seminar I attended was more about personal goals than big picture goals. It has long been my professional goal to become a Certified Golf Course Superintendent. I have made it my personal goal to achieve this in 2011. The seminar thoroughly laid out all that is involved with applying for and succeeding in the certification process. It will be a challenge to complete all of the facets in a 12 month period, but it will be a challenge worth taking!

My final seminar was all about the maintenance facility itself. As many of you can relate, the maintenance facility is not a place that is “seen” by the membership, in fact, some members may not even know of its existence. It is largely for this reason that maintenance facilities are forgotten about and largely misunderstood. The “barn” as most refer to it is actually a far cry from a barn. Nationwide, maintenance “barns” house an average of $1.2 million dollars worth of equipment and inventory needed to protect and maintain the backbone of the club. Our scenario is not much different than the national average. In our case, we house 16 employees in peak season and spend $700k of the club’s money on the course. An efficient operation is a necessity, especially in these financial times. It will be my goal (one of many) in this planning year of 2010, to investigate and diagnose inefficiencies within my department. The ultimate goal will be to find solutions that will be included in future club improvements.

Besides the seminars, I spent the better part of a day at the trade show looking at some of the many new products available this year.  High on my list of things to research is the new Jacobsen Eclipse triplex mower.  We currently have "E-plexes" which are all electric triplexes and occasionally have issues with the longevity of the batteries.  Our lease expires after this year and we will be replacing those E-plexes with something different.  The new Eclipse hybrid has a small gas (or diesel) engine that runs a generator that, in turn, runs the on board electric components.  This unit is much improved from our current units and I can't wait for my demo this summer.  The other product that sparked my interest was a bunker liner that doesn't require you to hand rake bunkers after installation.  I will be researching this product more this year in preparation of our upcoming bunker work.

Blogging about Blogging

I was talking with a member the other day and he was telling me how much he enjoyed reading my newsletter articles and the e-mail update I used to send out.  "How come you don't send out that E-Update anymore?" was the next obvious question.  I obviously took the opportunity to promote my blog and directed him on how he could navigate his way to the blog.  It got me thinking though... I've spent a considerable amount of time setting up this blog, adding "gadgets" that make it both user friendly and aesthetically pleasing, updating the blog with as much regularity as possible (I'm getting better), learning to add pictures, videos, etc, but I have no idea if anyone is even looking at it!

I called upon my neighbor (who is way smarter than me) to help me out and he pointed me to Google Analytics, a free program to track gobs of information on any website.  I subsequently investigated Google Analytics signed up my blog to be tracked.  I now have the ablilty to track how many hits per day my blog gets...

...and I can even see from which cities the hits originate...

This is probably not very new technology, but "wow" I say, it's pretty cool what you can do for free these days!  Now that I have the ability to track hits and find out some information about each hit (don't worry I can't find out "who" is on my blog, just what you are looking at) my next challenge will be to get the word out to my membership and have them use this blog for it's original intent.  This blog is such a great tool to get information out to the masses in a very short time, it would be a shame if it's intended audience isn't watching.  Feel free to comment with any suggestions!