Memorial Day Weekend

     Memorial day is coming up on Monday and the golf course is really good right now.  The grounds crew has been putting in countless hours wrapping up extensive projects throughout the property.  We have finished seeding all of the new native areas throughout the property and are wrapping up with the extensive drainage in #12 and #14 fairways.

     If you're curious which natives areas I am referring to, it's all the recently tilled areas with the signs that say "keep out of newly seeded areas".  Though these spots are bare now, with the warming trends and rainfall we should start seeing germination in 14-21 days.  The process to prepare the native areas was extensive. We started by spraying non-selective herbicide on three separate occasions to kill off any unwanted weeds or grass in the areas.  After the herbicide applications the areas were then scalped down with a brush hog

 mower.  The areas were then rototilled with a three point tiller hooked up to one of our tractors.  Following the tilling process a harrow rake was pulled through all the areas to break up any large clods and helps smooth out any imperfections.  Finally came the seeding part.  We applied a blend of Soil Guard hard fescue and Big Horn GT hard fescue at a rate of roughly .4lbs/1000 sq. ft.  Mind you this was walk applied to roughly five acres of area.  Once the seed was spread we followed through with the harrow rake again to work the seed into the soil (it is important for good seed to soil contact for germination).  The final process was attaching our three-gang roller to a vehicle and rolling all the native areas to compact the soil.  These ares are going to help reduce labor and equipment usage by eliminating the unnecessary mowing of these out of place areas and will also serve as a safe haven for small animals.

   


     Other updates that will hopefully be noticed by less "no cart" days are the drainage areas we have completed in fairways.  The crew did a stellar job laying close to 1000' of pipe the past couple of weeks in #12 and #14 fairways.  These two fairways tend to stay the wettest the longest and with the drainage that has been laid it should allow for proper drying of the aforementioned areas.  Drainage is important for numerous reasons.  The most obvious reason is to get water off the property in a timely fashion; but without drainage, problems such as compaction, scalding, no carts, and drowning of the plant can wreak havoc.  The famous saying about golf courses is "The three most important things on a golf course are drainage, drainage, drainage.  \
     As for the rest of the golf course, the mowing heights are set for the season.  We will continue with routine cultural practises to help improve every aspect of the golf course.  Don't worry, these practises are minimally invasive and hardly noticeable but extremely important.  Please have a wonderful long Memorial Day weekend as the golf season is now in Full Swing!!

Making the Turn

     So all this talk of rain and poor weather conditions has to end...doesn't it?  The future forecast looks like we are finally going to get some warm weather.  With warm weather comes growing grass!  The golf course is in excellent condition all things considered and it is about to get a whole lot better.  All of our aerification practices are complete and now it's time for things to heal.  The fairways look amazing and all holes have filled in.  Tee aerification was delayed multiple days but we were able to finally knock it out last Thursday (May 4th).  Greens aerification was completed in one day and the finished product is outstanding.  Aerfication helps with compaction and allows gas exchange while providing the roots an easier channel to grow longer and stronger.  With the help of a contracted company we are able to use a dryject machine that uses high pressure to force sand into the greens to a depth of roughly 6''.  We then followed up with our own aerifiers using 3/8'' solid tines set to a depth of roughly 4.5-5''.  The greens were then topdressed  with more sand to fill in our own holes followed by a verticut, and then brushed to get the sand into the holes.  The picture to the right shows #10 green four days post aerification.

   

 Other going ons throughout the course included wrapping up some major projects.  The lake bank rehabilitation will be completed on Friday (May 12th).  The lake bank had been eroding through the years and had started to take a turn for the worse.  We were able to use our excavator and reshape the pond bank, remove some woody material, and re-sodded the edge with tall fescue.  We also incorporated some fine fescue at both the north and south end of the lake bank to match the fescue throughout the property.  The new look of this lake bank will be a more attractive site to the golfers, especially from the tees.  It is now visible, thus making the golfer think a little bit more about pulling their tee shot left.

     One more area I would like to point out is the gold tee on 17.  Do you remember the little sliver of tee space tucked into the buckthorn on 17?  It is now an actual tee complex matching the rest of the golf course.  We shortened the blue tee a bit and built a whole new gold tee.  The project turned out really good and we are extremely happy with the look.  Moving the gold tee forward just a little bit will help out immensely.  We will be able to maintain the turf and not have the issues like we did with the old tee.

      Coming in the following weeks we will be adding a bit more drainage to high traffic and consistently wet areas in fairways (#12 and #14).  The areas that have been killed off between #8/#12 and #12/#17 will be rototilled, and then seeded with fine fescue.  These areas will mimic native areas such as between #2/#7.  Once the project season wraps up (before Memorial Day) our focus shifts to mowing the grass and getting our heights of cut to our season goal.  It has been a great start to the season and we look forward to providing the membership with the best playing conditions in Chicago.  As always, please be courteous to the players behind you and fix your ballmarks, replace divots, and rake the bunkers.

Action Packed

This past week was a big week for our department.  Weather cooperated for the most part allowing us to complete fairway aerification, herbicide applications, projects, along with lots of mowing.  Each week we continue to see progress throughout the course.  Wrapping up projects has been our #1 goal but as grass becomes more active we pick up our daily course maintenance.  Things will be busy over the next few weeks as we continue our spring aerification processes and wrap up the remaining projects at hand.

Fairway aerification is a detailed process, with numerous pieces in place.  Over the last few years we have been more aggressive as our fairways have needed it.  I remember when I arrived to Briarwood;fairways were soft and you received absolutely no roll out on tee shots.  In fact, the ball would bounce backwards.  Changes in practices have improved that.  We now aerify spring and fall followed with heavy topdressing.  The aerification has helped reduce compaction and increase our rooting structure for the turf.  By doing such processes. less water is needed allowing fairways to stay firmer.  Adding topdressing only helps with the above.  Filling aeration holes with sand creates porous avenues for water to drain and roots to follow.  Drying down fairways in the spring forces the turf to push it's roots deeper in search of water.  I'm really happy with the way our fairways have improved.  Along with mentioned above, I continue to notice when divots are taken it's rarely an enormous piece of turf.  Most often the divot breaks apart or it's a smaller piece of turf.  This is due to the topdressing and creating a firmer surface.

Spring herbicide and insecticide applications were made over the past week.  These applications are made to control unwanted weeds and insects.  Each year we make preventative applications for grubs and crabgrass, by doing so it helps reduce populations greatly of such pests and keeping turf more healthy.  We've switched grub control over the last few years with great success.  Before we'd see damage in the early fall from skunks, raccoons and other animals digging for grubs.  The newer insecticide that we've used has eliminated much of our grub population and thus results in less damage from critters digging for them.  Fescue areas saw their spring herbicide applications as well.  These applications are made to control weedy grasses along with other weeds like; dandelions, thistle, clover, etc...  Two applications are usually made earlier spring followed by spot applications throughout the season.

Drainage added between 9 tee and 12 fairway; new 6"
perforated line.

Projects continue to get crossed off our list.  We made a big push at the end of the week to finish up sod work.  Looks like a decent amount of rain is expected this weekend.  Having sod work completed like; stump holes, drainage areas, and other damage is a relief.  Each week we continue to pick off new drainage projects.  The latest was the right of 14 fairway.  This is and area that stays saturated due to being a low area and lots of shade.  Adding drainage will make this area much better.  Other drainage that has been added through last fall and this spring has really showed to be beneficial.

Crew laying sod along 1 and in front of 2 gold tee.
This was a large drainage project done last fall; here
we replaced old 8" concrete tile with 12" double
wall plastic

We are looking to have another great week ahead.  It will take some time to dry from the latest storms but looks to be a good end to the week.  Plans of tee aerification and lake bank work along the 5th hole lay ahead.  With the latest rains and fertilizer applications I'm sure our mowing duties are going to be put in over drive.  May is here; lets hope for a great month of weather and golf.

Catching a Break

Finally we caught a good stretch of weather.  Seems like it's been long that we had strung together more than 2 days where we didn't receive rain.  We caught our break and took absolute advantage of it this past week.  We were just waiting for the right time to dive in and get work done our project list and we checked off a large amount.  This past week, guys spent a large majority of it laying sod.  Numerous tree stump holes were sodded over, drainage trench lines sodded, and we finished up our tee complex work.  We were unable to get completely done but about 90% of the way!

Where do we go from here?  In the next few weeks we dive into cultural practices for our playing surfaces.  Starting tomorrow is fairway/approach aerification.  This will be a week long process of poking holes and slinging sand.  May 1st we will address our tees with verticutting, aerification, and topdressing.  And finally on May 8th, we will address our greens/approaches with verticutting, aerification, and topdressing.

We are very excited with where we sit at this point in the season.  For awhile there, we thought we'd never begin to catch up.  We still have a long way to go till we are in mid-season form but we are close.  Our hopes are that after the next few weeks were are set to ensue on regular course maintenance.  We may bounce through with a drainage project here and there as we have seen such success from the work we've done.