Fall 2012

It's been awhile since my last post, and I apologize.  With being some time since the last post I have a great deal to cover although I'll do so by a couple of entries rather than one large entry. 

This fall has behaved as what I view a normal fall.  We've been on the cooler side since the beginning of September and it remains that way.  Frost came early to BCC this season, actually the 2nd to last week in September.  This frost is the earliest I've seen in my time here at Briarwood which, I find odd as we just experienced one of the warmest summers ever.  Is there meaning behind this?  Do I want meaning out of this cooler weather and early frost?  Anymore I'm not sure.  Mother Nature has thrown us for a loop over the last three years so planning or predicting has gone to the way side, it's now just deal with it as it comes. 

Thankfully we've been receiving some much needed moisture as of late.  3 weeks ago when they began the clubhouse project I found it fascinating on how dry the soil was that was being dug up at 7" let alone 2ft.  Watching this I became a bit concerned on the moisture reserves for winter.  One thing we don't want is for the ground to go into winter dry, so these rain events are welcomed.  My concern is going into winter dry with dry turf only opens up the possiblity of widespread dessication if there is limited snow cover.  Snow cover helps protect the turf from the cold and dry winter winds, if the turf is already dry headed in this could only be accelerated.  We've scheduled our irrigation system shut down for the end of November rather than our normal early November.  Reasons being are:

1. Equipment (Air Compressor) needed wasn't available till the end of November
2. I wanted to wait later to see how the conditions of November shape up.  If we continue to stay dry I may look into the possibilty of running lengthy routine cycles of irrigation to try and replenish some of the moisture.

Enough of that though; what's been taking place on the Grounds of BCC.  September was a busy month with projects and aerification.  With the clubhouse project kicking off in October we needed to get all of our fairway aerification out of the way as our sand storing areas were going to be taken away.  Tuesday after Labor Day we completed our approach aerification.  Tees and fairways followed suit.  With doing such processes earlier it helped speed up recovery time as soil temperatures were still ample.  Tees we've seen take a bit longer as they weren't completed till mid September when things began to subside.  They've all healed up now and look great.  Fairways were wrapped up at the end of September, currently going through again using our deeptine.  Normally deeptining would take place at the same time but our machine had some mechanical difficulties and was in the shop.  Now that it's back we'll complete the fairways as well as carry the deeptining out on tees and approaches.

Jorge using our GA-60 to do solid tine aerification on fwys.  Here we placed the sand down prior to see how it worked into the turf canopy.  It worked in nice by the vibration of the machine but didn't leave much on the surface to fill holes, we altered our process after seeing this.  We'd aerify first then apply the sand.

Ramon applying the sand to the fairways.  Our application rate was roughly 11.5-12 ton per acre, this rate correlates to roughly .5 lbs sand per square foot.

Photo illustrates sand topdressing on the 9th fairway.

 

Collar aerification was another task we wanted to accomplish.  As we went through this extreme summer we noticed areas on the collars that were thinning due to stress.  Aerification and topdressing is a practice to help create better roots as well as turf density that in turn helps create more durable turf.  This will be an application that is carried out again in spring and will be an ongoing process to help the newer collars handle the stress of continuous mower traffic.

Here Moe is aerifying the collars.  We removed some of the tines so that the area disturbed was only that of the collar.  Plugs were cleaned up and then topdress with sand to be brushed in my push brooms.

Along with the cultural practices we embarked on a few native area restorations.  If you remember back to the bunker project we disposed of the old bunker sand in the "native/tallgrass" areas in preparation of one day reclaiming them.  Fescue blends thrive in sandy conditions and by disposing of the sand here it helped amend the soil.  We've selected a few areas on the course to experiment with some fescue blends and see how they are for playability, maintenance, and aesthetics.  As of today the areas are coming in nicely.  We've seen great germination and the coverage has gotten better and better.  Our goal was to not do a heavy seeding as we want the areas partly sparse giving the ability to find a ball, unlike previously.  We'll look at selecting a few other areas if these areas are successful and we accomplish what we were looking for.  I think these renovations will help with all aspects listed above.