A Lot of Rain

We were begging for it and true to good Ole "Mother Nature" she answered our begging and she didn't disappoint. From last Friday to Tuesday of this week we have received about 3.25" of rainfall. It was much needed to help rehydrate the soils and help replenish our water supply in our holding ponds, but it has made the working and playing conditions very wet and is now causing some challenges for us. Today we are trying to mow as much of the rough as possible without making a complete mess of things and we are trying to blow the clumps of clippings as well. Our plan over the next couple of days is to mow as much as possible and try and keep the rough at a manageable level. I know it is difficult right now to play out of at times but we are doing all that we can right now to battle the wet conditions and growth rate of the cool season roughs. Also this morning we topdressed the greens with sand to continue to help keep the putting surfaces smooth and help with the firmness of the greens. We are keeping our eyes on a few Zoysia spots in our fairways on #7, 8, and 9, that are either in a low area where moisture set all winter, in shaded areas, on North facing slopes, or a combination of all of these that are a lot slower to green up. I think most of the areas will be fine once temperatures and sunlight become the norm and they actually have some time to grow. We have given these areas some extra fertilizer to try and stimulate the growth and have had some good look doing so. However there might be an area or two that we may have to end up sodding out as there may not be enough turf left in the areas to recover. I am going to let these areas sit for another week or two to see if any recovery occurs before we make the decision to replace them. It looks like the weather forecast for the end of the week is looking very favorable and warm which will be great for everyone. Have a great week and I hope to see everyone soon!!

Mowing Zoysia

Warmer temperatures have continued to grace us with their presence here in Kansas City over the last week or so. The turf has really started to finally grow and thicken up. The greens have really improved and the healing of the aerification process is progressing nicely. Today we were able to get out and mow our zoysia for the first time on the fairways and tees. This really cleaned up the tees and fairways a lot by cutting off the dormant material that was laying on top and it really greened some of them up. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the upcoming forecast for Thursday holds true and that we get the much needed rainfall that they are forecasting. Soil conditions right now are really dry and we could use some rain to help replenish our water supply going into the summer. Here is a picture of one of our fairway mowers mowing on #18 fairway if you look real closely you can see a pretty big difference in the green and how much plant material we were mowing off today.

Busy Friday

Some much needed sunshine and warm temperature is just what the doctor needed here at Wolf Creek and it looks like the big man delivered today. The weather today has been the best it has been all year up to this point. Bright sunshine and temperatures in the 60s. The maintenance team was able to take advantage of the weather today as we had an extremely busy morning. Along with a lot of our members who took the time to come out to participate in the Demo Day on the range, we were out and about after the frost broke spraying greens, mowing rough, mowing green banks, raking bunkers, and hand watering the newly sodded areas in our roughs. The greens have slowly but surely continued to heal after the aeration we did a week ago. The cold weather has really slowed the recovery down from where they normally are at this point after the aerification. Our upcoming forecast will really help them to continue to grow rapidly and should really do some healing over the weekend. One area I am keeping a close eye on is the back of the #9 green. It has come out of winter significantly slower then the other greens due to the long winter and windy conditions we have had as of late due to its location of sitting up on the hill. The back portion of the green stayed frozen longer and was in the shade longer then any of our other greens. We have been trying to give this green some added help in it's recovery with some extra food and TLC. If we don't see some improvement in the next week or so we will probably have to do some spot sodding on the back hump where the majority of the winter dessication to place. This will be no big issue as the area is on the back part of the green and is not in play all that often. Have a great weekend and enjoy the warm temperatures.

Heavy Frost,Sunshine and No Wind

The day got started today on the chilly side but man did it turn out to be a great day! We had vibrant sunshine and minimal wind. Our team has been waiting a long time for a day like today. After the heavy frost burned off this morning around 9am or so we were able to get our work started. We were able to mow the greens for the first time since aeration with the sand reels and they did great. The greens did get a little warm in spots on Saturday afternoon due to the wind, warm temperatures, and some sand still laying on them. Some of them don't look as good as the others but once they get some sunlight and warm temperatures and some hand watering love they should turn around pretty quickly. When the wind blows in excess of 30 mph and you have open holes and sand laying on the bentgrass it is darn near impossible to not have some dry spots show up. Today we were also able to start applying our pre-emergent herbicides in our roughs and fairways. Our hope is to have this complete by tomorrow and just in time to hopefully catch some more much needed rain that is in the forecast for later in the week. Speaking of rain we did receive about 1" of rain on Sunday. The rain really made the rough and zoysia grass really start to wake up. We were able to get the mowers out today and start our second mow. As is the customary during the spring the rough will get damp, thick, and grow like a weed. I would like to ask for everyone's patience as we will work diligently on keeping it at a playable height with trying to keep up on the mowing. The benefits of keeping the turf at 3" year round will really benefit us come summer time when it is put under a tremendous amount of stress from the heat and traffic.

Taste of Spring

It has been an extremely busy week here at Wolf Creek this week. As I mentioned in the previous post we completed our aerification of our greens and approaches. The process went extremely well and we accomplished all that we hoped too. We also try to minimize our disruption to the play however some of our practices are just hard to minimize the disruption. One of those is our rough aerification. I decided to try and get it completed this week as well since the greens were aerified and our play traditionally is lighter I figured I would try and get all these practices knocked out the same week so that the recovery and messiness only happens once. It looks like we should get the rough completed by the end of today which is going to be huge. The forecast shows that we have a chance for some rain on Sunday so this will be the perfect time for the rain to wash in the sand on the greens and help break down the plugs in the roughs. The maintenance team has also been busy applying amendments and our first preventative application of fungicide to the greens and starting to apply our pre-emergents to our zoysia grass bunker faces and tees. We have also been busy rolling the greens and doing some more blowing to try and encourage the sand to continue to work its way into the canopy of the turf. I am happy with how this is progressing and am feeling pretty good about the expected recovery if the weather continues to help us out. I have attached some pictures of the rough aerator and what it looks like after the plugs are pulled. We use a tumble style of aerator in our roughs and fairways because of all the rock that is underneath our property it just does a better job and we don't tear up as much equipment and turf as we do with the regular style. I hope everyone has a great weekend enjoying the weather and watching the best golf tournament in my opinion in the world The Masters.

Aerification Is Here

Aerification time is here and these two days are extremely busy and very important days. We started on Monday morning by verti-cutting the greens helping to remove thatch build up. Next we laid our first layer of sand topdressing down. We then used solid tines (not pulling a core) creating a 5/8" hole going to a depth of approximately 10" deep. This helps to create channels in the green that helps to break up compaction and allows oxygen, nutrients, and water to penetrate down into the green which increases our root depth by giving them a reason to grow down and chase the food and nutrients. Roots will only grow where there is food and oxygen available just like us humans. After the holes were made we then used our drag brush and drug the sand into the holes. Today we are then going back over the greens with coring tines with our walk behind aerifiers and pulling 5/8" cores on 2 inch spacing at a depth of about 4-6". This practice is helping to remove thatch and breaking up the compaction that has accumulated in the top surface of the greens. This is very beneficial in helping the greens stay firmer, diluting the thatch, helping get oxygen into the soil profile, reducing compaction, and allowing nutrients to get to the roots as well. The recovery process for these practices usually takes about 2 weeks for the greens to get back into regular playing condition. However this year things are a bit slower in greening up and growing so hopefully the weather will cooperate this week and next and give us some good growing days to aid in the healing process.

Spring is Arriving Slowly

The spring weather continues to slowly work it's way into the Kansas City area. We have been getting a day or two of warm spring weather (windy none the less) and then boom it changes to 30 degree lows and 50 degree highs. The ups and downs of weather in the transition zone make things a bit hectic and complicated at times. However we have been staying the course and have been able to continue to get a lot of work done on the course. As I mentioned in my blog post on Friday we were able to get the greens fertilized and we have seen some good green up on them. It is slower then in years past but they are starting to grow at a more regular rate. If mother nature can help us out tonight and the rest of the week and give us some much needed rainfall I am very confident that they will be good to go for aeration which is scheduled for April 7th and 8th. Also today we are in the process of spraying some of our high profile native areas with a pre-emergent to help control the broad leaf weeds and summer annual grassy weeds. I have not done this in my tenure here yet but over the last couple of years our weed population in these areas have continued to grow and are starting to get unsightly, so we are going to try this product and see how we do. Finally we were able to get some sod and get all the old stumps and trench lines that we made from grinding and trenching sodded over just in time to catch the rain that is in the forecast. With the rain and warmer temperatures these sodded areas should take off and look good in the matter of a few weeks. Have a great week!!