As expected...

With the recent warm up, I have finally gotten outside to get a look at some of our turf.  As expected, we have a decent crop of snow mold.  While historically we don't get enough prolonged snow cover to worry about snow mold on a large scale, the past two winters have caused some grief.  With today (February 17th) being the first real day of "open turf", we have to go back to early December to find the last day without substantial snow cover.  This is well beyond the 60 days of snow cover usually required to have snow mold issues.  Whether we have Gray Snow Mold or Pink Snow Mold is the question, but it is likely we have a little of both.  Also likely is that they are purely cosmetic and the fungus did not make it to the crown of the plant and cause a lethal infection.

So what now?  With the snow cover all but gone and freezing temperatures in the horizon, the fungus will stop actively growing until freezing temperatures subside.  When the ground conditions warrant, will be making an early fungicide application to take care of the snow mold and some other likely spring diseases.  Once the turf starts actively growing, it will simply grow through the cosmetic effects of the disease.

Firewood Available

We've been doing some tree work over the last two winters and have managed to accumulate a rather large amount of firewood.  All of the soft wood (pine, etc.) has been hauled off and only oak and other hardwood remains.  If you are local and would like some wood, just send me an email.  We're happy to help you load and have a splitter available during working hours. About half of the oak was cut last year so it should be pretty seasoned!

A long break...

I seem to make this promise once every year that I'll continue to post regularly on this blog, and every year I seem to fail.  Maybe 2011 will be better! 

A lot has happened in the nearly six months since my last post.  Today I intend on catching you up on some of the projects we have done since August.

1.  Strategic Improvement Plan:  For the past several years we have been working with Fine Golf Design, Inc. out of Allentown, Pennsylvania on a "master plan" of sorts to address some recurring issues with our golf course.  Mark Fine has collaborated with Scott Witter of Witter Design to come up with a plan to enhance our course in a way that will address some infastructure problems, and will also take our course back to a "classic design" as intended by our original architect, Tom Bendelow.  The Strategic Improvement Plan, as we are calling it, addresses three major areas: bunker design and placement, our tree population, and our drainage.  In addition to these three major items, it addresses some more subtle changes such as grassing lines, green shape, and tee orientation. 

2.  Green Expansions:  Due to the difficult growing conditions during the summer of 2010, some of the fringes of our greens (primarily Poa annua) succumbed to the heat and needed reseeding.  We decided to work with the Strategic Improvement Plan and expand the greens per Mark Fine's design as long as we needed to do some work anyways.  Going into the winter we had good germination of the new fringes.  As soon as spring "springs" we will get back on the fringes and begin the process of leveling them to the green surface.

3.  Winter Work:  We are well into the annual refinishing of all of our wooden golf course accessories.  With the ample snowfall we have had thus far this winter, we have been able to make good progress on the accessories.  Hopefully the winter will cooperate and let us get outside in the next month or so to get some much needed tree work accomplished.

As normally happens this time of year, our staff is getting antsy to get back outside.  As a breed, we like to breath fresh air and being cooped up in a shop starts to cause cabin fever.  I'll leave you with a shot of Lucy in her favorite spot... eyeing the squirrels.  It pretty much sums up how our staff feels also!

Taking advantage of a break...

After a long stretch of weather in the 90's (upper 90's in some cases) we have finally moved to a little cooler weather pattern.  As we should, we are taking advantage of the cooler weather to catch up on some much needed work.  We will be out in force over the next couple days eradicating the many weeds that have taken hold this summer.  We will be using both physical removal and herbicide treatments to get the job done (see picture) and hope to have most of the weeds killed or removed by the time the hot weather comes back.

During the most recent heat wave, we were unable to deal with the weeds for several reasons.  First, selective herbicides tend to lose their selectivity when applied during periods of high heat or when the turf is under stress.  It is safe to say that our turf has definitely been under some stress lately!  Secondly, the labor it takes to physically pull weeds was being directed at other projects, many dedicated to hoses just to keep our turf alive.

As we slowly transition from summer to fall, we will be out re-seeding many areas affected by the summer of 2010, and in some cases even laying new sod.  Please continue to be patient and respect any "traffic directing" items such as ropes and/ or arrows.  Soon we will be able to again enjoy the beauty that is Champaign Country Club!

Why does turf die in the summer?

The summer of 2010 has proven to be a difficult on for turf managers.  Nationwide, with very few exceptions, golf courses have borne the brunt of Mother Nature be it too wet, too dry, and without fail too hot.  Here in central Illinois we are no exception.  Our golf courses have experienced turf loss on a grand scale with very few exceptions.  As it has worked out, the problems have been mainly with Poa annua.  Naturally then, golf courses who have more Poa annua have had more difficulties and golf courses with less Poa annua have faired much better.  The embedded video was produced to help explain the effects that heat has on turf.  As you watch the video, consider the fact that here at CCC we have routinely seen 2" soil temperatures spike at 97 degrees in the heat of the afternoon! Difficult growing conditions to say the least!

We will continue to fight the fight, man the hoses, and baby our turf until cooler temperatures prevail (I can't wait) at which point we will begin making our way around the course to reseed areas that are too far gone to recover.

While we certainly haven't been the hardest hit in our area, we do have some trouble spots.  Let's hope for a fall that is conducive to seed germination and subsequent growth!

Struggling...

I'll be brief today as I have a golf course to try and baby through another day.  Today I measured the 2" root zone temperature and, as you can see it is hot! About 96 degrees in fact... Supra-optimal is what the experts call this... I call it something else (which I will keep to myself).  Combine the root zone temperature, humidity and nighttime lows in the upper 70's and you can see why we struggle to keep things pretty.  Improvements will come, but right now we are simply focused on maintaining a solid stand of turf.

The weather is supposed to break tomorrow and we will drop our daily highs about 10 degrees, more importantly our nighttime lows will be dipping into the 60's for the first time in what seems like forever...

Drainage Pimple, Bunker Repairs (again)

Mother Nature continues to keep us on our toes.  This afternoon we recieved around 1" of rain in about 30 minutes while the Golf Shop guage showed nearly 2" (just about 220 yds north of our shop).  After touring the golf course, it is apparant that the northen half of the golf course took much more rain than the south half!  Crazy weather...

The deluge caused a rather large bulge in the 9th fairway due to an old clogged drain line.  See picture and video to see just how much water was trapped under the sod!

 

                                        

As always, the heavy rain caused our bunkers to washout.  We were able to start repairs right away and will continue the process tomorrow.  Kudos to the crew for their hard work fixing our bunkers after heavy rains!