Great Weather Continues

The great weather has continued over the past week or so.  Temperatures have been absolutely perfect along with low humidity which has really made being outside very comfortable.  Cool season grasses have really benefited with the break in the weather which has allowed them to relax and start to grown and develop a root system again and not just trying to survive like they were doing when temperatures and the humidity were higher.  On the course this week we started our annual over seeding of some of the rough areas where the cart and foot traffic have been concentrated.  We started seeding some areas last week and I just started seeing some seed germination this morning.  That is pretty darn good having germination in about 6 days as some times it takes 10 to 14 days.  However the conditions have been ideal and it is awesome to see!  Finally we got all the back filling and sodding around the new tee line on the driving range tee and the hitting shed completed.  It turned out very nice.  I already showed you a picture a week or so ago in one of my blog post's of the line on the driving range tee, but here is a picture of the one in front of the building.  Hopefully the fescue grass will survive better in front of the building due to all the shade that occurs in this area the zoysia never really had a fighting chance as it likes to receive a lot of sun.  Greens continue to perform well.  Along with the other cool season turf the bentgrass greens are really liking these weather conditions of late.  A lot of the stressed areas where the foot traffic or mower traffic has occurred have really started to recover and are getting less and less noticeable.  Also the firmness in the surfaces has started to come back as the roots of the turf are developing again and the water requirements are a lot less due to the lower temperatures and lower humidity.  We are scheduled for our greens aerification on September 8th, but we are going to aerify the new putting green on Thursday to try and give it time to get it healed up before the other greens are aerified.  Also this week we have started to try and tackle some of our native areas and spraying some of the broadleaf weeds that have emerged.  We were able to keep up early in the year but as the rain kept falling and areas flooded we slowly lost control of the weed growth.  Right now we are focusing on some high profile areas around tees and greens and will hopefully work our way around the entire property eventually.  Hopefully everyone has been able to get out and enjoy this awesome weather over the past week or so.   It looks like tomorrows forecast for the annual Member/Pro/Guest event is ideal and should provide some great playing conditions.  Next week's forecast looks to rise into the upper 80's to low 90's so we aren't quite done with summer yet, but with the shorter days things will start to feel cooler.    

Jacket Weather

Wow what a change in the weather today!  Going from upper 80's to lower 90's for highs down to lower 70's for highs and 50's for lows was a shock to the system this morning.  I don't remember the last time I wore a jacket in the middle of August.  The cool weather and 1" of rain yesterday were very beneficial and will provide the turf a little bit of relaxation and much needed "Mother Nature" love.  All the cool season grasses in the roughs and on the greens will greatly appreciate this break in the weather.  Our maintenance team continues to stay busy as the season continues to fly bye.  Today's schedule consisted of mowing the greens and rolling, mowing fairways and tees that were dry, and fixing the bunkers after the rain. Along with raking of the bunkers we are also starting the process of checking the sand depths and moving the sound around to get our consistent depth of 4" of sand on the floor of the bunkers and 2" of sand in the face of the bunkers.  After the wet weather we have had this year the sand has been moved around quite a bit by the rains and has caused some inconsistencies in our bunkers.  After we get this slow process completed the bunkers should play a lot more consistent.  There are a few bunkers we will be adding some new sand to as they have gotten shallow with sand from either a lot of play or from our crew having to remove sand after wash outs to get the silt out of the bunkers.  Also today we are push mowing around the bunkers as the zoysia grass continues to grow at a very rapid pace.  I have attached a few pictures below showing some work from this morning and this afternoon.  Looking ahead it looks like the weather is going to stay relatively cool for this time of year into next week.  This stretch of weather should really help our new putting green continue to develop the root structure it needs to withstand the daily wear and tears.  We are monitoring it daily and I will keep everyone up to date as we move along in the process.  If temperatures stay cool we may try to aerify the putting green a week or so prior to our regular greens to help with it's recovery.  This is all dependent on the development of the roots over the next couple of weeks or so during this cool down.  Over seeding in our roughs will hopefully start once the ground dries up some after these rains.  It is a great time to get seed down with the cool temperatures so we are going to try and take advantage of them.  I hope everyone enjoys the weather over the next few days as much as our staff and I will!!

Mowing fairways and the Zoysia grass continues to shine!!!!

Team members checking sand depths in bunkers and pulling the zoysia runners growing down into the bunkers.

Push mowing bunker faces.

  

Busy Times With A Great Cool Down

This week has been an extremely busy one so far and we are only on Tuesday! The nice cool down in the temperatures and humidity has been a big change.  Also the fact that it has been mostly dry is also been a big part in allowing us to finally get some much needed projects completed.  Today we spiked and topdressed our putting greens.  These agronomic practices help us to get some much needed oxygen into the soil profile and helps the surfaces of the greens to dry out.  Topdressing is done to help keep the surfaces firm and smooth, while also helping to keep our organic matter (thatch) under control.  Also today we are finally finishing up the aeration of our tee boxes.  We are aerifying holes #2,3,4,5, & 18.  All that will be left after today is #1 and the driving range tees.  I am planning on getting these done next Monday weather permitting.  Also today we are applying another fertilizer application to the fairways. On top of our normal weekly maintenance practices we are also putting the finishing touches on the new tee line project on the driving range.  Our crew has been back filling around the concrete and installing the sod.  The project has turned out great and will be a huge benefit to our driving range tees moving forward as the tee line will help lighten the load of traffic and divots.  Looking ahead to the rest of the week we are planning to do some sodding on the green bank on #5 where the water sat this spring and summer during the floods along with a few other areas around the course.  If the temperatures stay cool we will start doing some over seeding in some of the rough areas over the next week or so as well.  Here are a few pictures of some of the happenings this week.  Enjoy the great weather and we hope to see all of you soon.

New Tee Line

Spiking Greens

Spike Holes on Greens

Topdressing Greens

Cool Temps and Rain

After some warm and humid days we finally have got a break today as temps are in the lower 80's and the humidity is a lot lower which has made things more bearable for the turf and for the staff.  Along with the lower temps and low humidity we also received 1.02" of rain overnight and into the morning.  This rain will be very beneficial and will help a lot of our stressed areas around the golf course start to recover.  Speaking of stressed turf I know everyone saw Rod's note on us shutting down the new putting green for a while.  We are doing this as the turf is only 5 months old and it is was starting to stress out pretty good from all the traffic and heat.  This spring was a great time to seed the green as the temperatures were fairly good and we got some good moisture.  However the other side of that is the roots of the turf never really grew down to the depths that they were getting as all the moisture and food they wanted were being provided for it at the surface.  We had to fertilize it quite a bit during grow in to try and get it to fill in and have the green ready to open when we did.  There are some areas around the edges where the seed washed during grow in and where it has been exposed to more foot and equipment traffic then other areas.  These areas are being sodded this week as the turf in these areas were a lot more immature then the rest of the green.  As the temperatures start to cool down and the days get shorter the green should recover  and our hope is to open it as soon as it gets it's legs back under it.  We were able to start our tee aerification this week and will continue to work on them the rest of this week.  Holes #6,7,8,9,15, & 16 are complete.  If the weather cooperates we should have most of if not all of them completed by next week.  Have a great week and enjoy the nice cool weather for a few days!

Heat Wave Continues

Temperatures have continued to stay hot and humid. Heat indexes have been over the 110 degree mark a few times over the past week or so.  The maintenance team has been busy trying to keep things cool along with our normal maintenance practices trying to keep everything as cool as possible and trying not to damage the grass with the equipment in the heat of the day.  All in all everything seems to be holding up pretty well.  The greens are showing a little stress in spots, but this is pretty normal under these conditions and hopefully the weather is going to cool off tomorrow like the forecasters are saying.  One thing I would like to ask everyone's help with is being diligent with the cart traffic in our roughs.  Majority of you do a great job of keeping the carts out of the roughs all the time, however it is very important this time of year to be as diligent as possible as the turf is in a fragile state and it doesn't take much to stress it out and cause damage with cart traffic.  Thank you all for your help and your willingness to help us out.   I apologize for not updating my last post with pictures from the tee line installation that is occurring on the driving range.   I have attached a couple pictures below of the concrete installation and then the beginning of the turf installation.  The contractors are on schedule to hopefully finish sometime later this week if the last roll of the turf arrives.  If it doesn't they may have to finish the beginning of next week and then once the turf has been glued down for 24 hours it is ready to use.  We are still trying to get the tees aerified.  Hot temperatures have caused us some delays as our staff has been busy doing other things.  My hope is that either later this week or next week we will be aerifying the tees which should only take us a week or so to complete.  I don't know how many of you have played lately and noticed the new Crabapple trees that we installed on holes # 3,10, & 18.  We put these trees in areas where we think they provide some nice color variations and provide a little backdrop to the green complexes. Well that about does it for today.  I hope everyone is able to stay inside and stay as cool as possible for the rest of today.  We are hoping the cool down tomorrow happens and that some of this heat and humidity gets out of here.  Stay cool and we hope to see you on the course soon!

Summer Weather and Rain Continue

Hot temperatures and high humidities along with bouts of rain have become the norm as of late here in Kansas City.  I have seen summers that are very hot and dry and I have seen summers where it has been very cool and wet, but I don't recall any that have been as wet and hot thus the high humidities as this year.  The maintenance staff has been staying busy trying to keep up with watering, mowing,  and keeping the diseases under control which has been a challenge.  Our new putting green has continued to hold up pretty well with all the traffic and heat.  However we do have one edge where the seed washed out several times during grow in that the turf never was able to mature enough to withstand the foot traffic it is receiving.  We will be patching in this area with some sod this week during this brief break in the temperatures.  Also this week we will be getting our new artificial turf tee line installed on the driving range tee.  I will post pictures once the contractor gets started. They were delayed today due to the 1.25" of rain that we received overnight.  Bunkers have become a topic of conversation lately as I have heard from some that they think they are too firm or don't have enough sand in them.  We changed up how we rake the bunkers this year and the frequency in how many times we rake them during the week to try and firm them up. Last year and even this spring members comments were they thought our bunkers were to soft and had too much sand in spots causing the ball to not release to the middle of the bunkers.  I feel that along with the change in our raking techniques that the firmness is a result of all the rain we have had.  The new bunkers that we have redone in the past two years aren't quite as firm because they do not have contaminated sand in them like the old ones due to the new linears we installed, keeping the new sand free and clean from the silt that washes during the heavy rains.  The comments on the new bunkers are that they are playing nicely and aren't quite as firm as the old ones.  We rake all the bunkers the same, so the difference is in the clean new sand being a better playing surface due to them not having contamination in them.  Our plan is too however add some sand to a few of our bunkers that wash out frequently where we have had to scoop silt and sand out of them following the storms.  I have been waiting on the rain chances to slow down so that the new sand won't get contaminated right away by a big rain event.  Like I said I will post some photos I hope later in the week of the new tee line installation. Have a great week!

Course Update with Crazy Weather

Needless to say our weather over the past week or so has been CRAZY!  High temperatures have been in the upper 90's to low 70's and lows have ranged from low 60's to mid to upper 70's.  Throw on top of that quite a bit of rain and humidity and you got yourself a tough situation when it comes to growing grass.  Root structure for the turf is shallow due to the frequent rain events so when the temperatures do soar into the upper 80's and 90's things get a little hairy trying to keep cool season roughs alive and not over water them at the same time.  This set up also makes managing greens a challenge as the frequent moisture and high humidity cause disease pressure and make water management very difficult.  Due to the amounts of moisture and humidity it is tough to keep green speeds consistent day in and day out.  Example is one day it will be 80 degrees with 65% humidity and the greens will be slower then when it is 90 degrees and 35% humidity and we are applying a lot more water by hand to areas on  the greens.  They will tend to be quicker on the hotter day due to the lack of humidity and moisture in the air.  During these temperature extremes we also have to be smart with how much equipment pressure we put on the greens (i.e. rollers, verticut, topdress, etc.) to try and not cause anymore stress then they are already under.  This is always a tough juggling act for all superintendents as we want the greens to be as fast as anyone while keeping them healthy and alive. We currently are mowing our greens at .105" and are rolling them 4-5 days a week depending on the weather.   We verticut and topdressed the greens on Monday taking advantage of the rain and cooler weather that we are forecast for on Tuesday and Wednesday.  This practice will help to remove any leaf tissue that the mowers have missed (which is one of the factors in green speed) and will help us to incorporate our topdressing sand better all while providing a nice opening in the surface so that oxygen and water can move down into the root zone.  There aren't a lot of years that I verticut on July 6th as temperatures and stress on the greens is usually to high for them to tolerate it.  This will help with some of the inconsistency in speed, but a lot of it will still depend on the weather conditions each day.  Our goal is to have the greens as close to our standard green speed day in and day out, but the moisture levels and temperature readings dictate the speeds a lot more then most people know.  Also the later in the day you play the slower greens typically get as the turf grows throughout the day.  We try to slow this growth process down by applying growth regulators, but they still tend to grow, hence why we mow them about every day.

We received 1.75" of rain over night and didn't have a lot of storm damage.  I feel very fortunate that we dodged a bullet with some of the areas around Kansas City that got hit pretty hard by flooding and high winds.  However there is more rain in the forecast and depending on who you watch or what you read it looks like there is the possibility for a lot more rain.  My hope is that it misses us and things will stay like they are and we can get back to our normal schedule on Wednesday and Thursday of mowing and doing our normal maintenance.  Also as soon as conditions dry out we will try and finish our fairway and tee aerification.  We are almost done on the fairways as the only ones left are (1,2,3,7, & 18) and we still have all of the tees and driving range to complete.