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!!

Crazy Weather Week

Needless to say the weather pattern this week has been a little unpredictable. We have have 60 degree days, winds in the 40 mph range, snow, rain, and severe weather threats in the form of hail and tornadoes in the area for the week. Just an ordinary week of spring weather in the Midwest I guess! The crew has continued to stay busy despite all the weather and we have had a great week up to this point. After we got the burning done on Monday we have been going through the burnt areas and cutting down all the suckers and volunteer trees that come up every year in these areas. It has really helped to clean them up and get them ready for us to start spraying our pre-emergent on them hopefully starting next week. The product we are going to apply will help prevent annual grassy weeds and broadleaved weeds from emerging in these areas. With the colder temperatures that we had at the beginning of the week things have slowed down growing but it looks like we are going to have an awesome weekend of weather so they should start greening up pretty good once again. We are applying our first application of fertilizer to our greens this morning to help them start growing and getting ready for our aerification on the 7th and 8th of April. Have a great weekend and enjoy the warm sunny weather that is coming our way!!

Finally!!

We finally got the go ahead today to burn our native grass areas. The guys were able to get the majority of the high profile areas burned before the snow moved in this afternoon. I am ecstatic that we got it done today ahead of the moisture that is coming and the fact that we go under a burn ban starting April 1st for an entire month. Getting these areas done will help us be able to control the unwanted weeds later in the year. What a crazy weather pattern we are in! One day it is 60 degrees two days later it is snowing! Welcome to weather in the Midwest. Here is a photo of the native areas burning this morning.

Windy and Warmer

Windy and warm have been the trends over the last few days. Temperatures have been in the upper 60s-70s with the night time lows being down around the high 30s-low 40s. However it looks like this is going to change over the weekend for at least a couple of days as forecasts are showing a cold front coming in bringing our highs back down into the 40s and lows in the 20s which will feel pretty darn cold after the warm trend we have been in. The turf has been waking up nicely with the warmer temps. Greens have really started to green up a bit and we are continuing to mow them about twice a week. Our plan was to start burning our native grass areas this week however the windy conditions and the lack of moisture have put a damper on us at this time. We have been checking everyday with the fire department to get the go ahead but we have been put on hold until further notice. Hopefully this will change next week as things are prime right now for a nice burn. Like I said we are out mowing the greens today and getting the bunkers cleaned up for the weekend. I hope everyone has been able to get outside and enjoy the sunshine and warm weather this week. Looks like this weekend may not be ideal but I think the long range forecast for the middle of next week is looking good again. March is a great time of year as everything starts to wake up and of course March Madness. My bracket has taken some hits already but I am hopeful my picks get it done in today's games. Good luck to my Wildcats tonight as they take on Kentucky they are going to need all the help and luck they can get!!! Go Cats!!!

Soil Temps are On The Rise

Weather conditions have continued to stay rather mild over the past couple of days. We had a little moisture over the weekend in the form of a little rain and then some sleet and snow followed by cold temperatures in the low 20s. The turf has started to wake up a little bit over the last week or so but the cold temperatures at night and last weekend have slowed this process down a little bit. However we are still mowing greens about 2 times a week right now and are getting a fair amount of clippings which means the bentgrass is growing which is great news. I took soil temperatures today and they read around the 45 degree mark. They say that the turf really doesn't start to do anything until soil temperatures hit the 50 degree mark for a couple days in row. Like I said though we have been getting a good amount of clippings in our mowing so I think it is just around the corner before things really break loose and start to grow. This is good news as I think the greens will be growing nicely for our greens aerification on April 7th and 8th. As you can see in the picture below there is a fair amount of green starting to peek through on our greens. There have been some questions as to why our greens are slower to green up then others around the area. Well this is due to the variety of bentgrass that our greens are which is A4 bentgrass. It is traditionally slow to wake up but then does better then some of the others in the heat of the summer meaning it is more of a warm season variety then some of the other varieties of bentgrass that are at other clubs in the area. Today we were finally able to get all the irrigation charged up and ready to go. The cold winter temperatures made things a little more difficult in recharging the lines as we had some irrigation heads freeze a bit and we had to wait on them to thaw or repair the broken parts before we could fully pressurize the lines.