Grain Management

Grain is a word we use to describe when the turf is laid over and growing horizontally (prostate) rather than in a vertical manner.  This affects how a ball rolls on a green by making putts go faster or slower and minimizing or maximizing the break depending on the direction of the grain in relation to the direction of the putt.  Grain does not really exist any more on greens, especially to the extent that it once did.  The turf on greens is so actively managed by verticutting, grooming, brushing, and low heights that grain is not a factor in putting anymore.

Brushes are mounted to the front of our greensmowers to stand up the turf before mowing.  While brushing can be a little aggressive for July type weather, we will do it quite a bit for the next month or so to train the greens to grow upright.  This practice also removes excessive leaf material resulting in faster, smoother greens.

We see much more grain formation on the bentgrass in the fairways than on greens. At higher heights of cut the turf wants to lay over.

This is some very ugly grain on our tenth fairway.  We have similar patches on the sixth and fourth fairways as well.  It seems like the wetness of those fairways has encouraged one type of really grainy bent.  This severe condition is very isolated but makes for this great illustration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This season the budget has allowed us to more actively manage the grain on the course and the biggest change is on the fairways.  Fairways are now managed like greens were twenty years ago.  We are raising the height of cut on the fairways in an effort to put more turf under the ball.  The increase in height as allowed for an explosion of graininess that you see in the picture above.  If the turf lays over, it becomes a very tight lie. The way we manage it is through brushing (like on the greens except bigger and pulled behind a utility vehicle) and verticutting.  We want the turf to stand up and present the ball.

 

 

Matt pulls a brush across the fairways for grain control.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anastacio verticuts a fairway to stand up the turf.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A close up of a verticut unit…one can see how the blades would cut grooves into the turf.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The result of verticutting.  The turf is standing up and ready to be mowed.

May and Bentgrass

While April is a month full of hope and warmth, May always seems to be colder than it should and rainy.  This is when bentgrass does not look its best.  Bent doesn’t look good on overcast days anyways, something about how it reflects the light…it is gray and looks like it is covered with leafspot.  I visited a Rhode Island course last week  and found a picture that illustrates the point.

The top portion of the photo is bent grass and the bottom is poa.  Bent is a much better choice for a fairway turf due to its resilience against insects and disease, it requires half the water poa does, and provides a fast and firm playing surface.  But early in the season, before it has fully woken up from the winter, under overcast skies it does not look as green as the poa.

It is important to remember that the bent is a much more consistent turf that will provide good playing conditions regardless of color throughout the year.  It will not die in the heat or a drought or the cold or an ice storm.  The only advantage poa has over bent is color on cloudy days and shoot density…hardly worth doubling the budget (water, fertilizer, and pesticide) and losing consistency for.

Sand and the Open

The greenkeeping blog from St. Andrews is a real treat to read and we are lucky to be in a period of time where we can communicate so easily.  The information for just about anything is out there for those who want to look and learn.

Gordon McKie does a very good job with this blog explaining topdressing, playability, and organic matter management.  The practice of adding sand to the playing surface to smooth and allow the turf to grow through is at least a hundred years old.  Not only was this a playability tool, it turns out that it is a great health tool helping with drainage, rooting, and disease.

There are many superintendent’s in the states that are trying to find a way to work this practice is into the golf calendar as it is a great way to improve the golf course and provide championship conditioning all while still being very sustainable.

Cart Primer

Every year is a new start on the golf course.  We are always assessing whether the old ways of doing things are still needed in a new year.  One of these subjects is cart ropes.  As the Green and Grounds Chairman said at opening night dinner, no one like cart ropes.  No one likes the look of them, handicapped golfers have to navigate the carts around them, and the G&G staff has to remove them to mow.  Every spring we hold off putting out ropes until we see the wear areas develop.

Motorized carts were nowhere to be found on golf courses until the 1930’s.  Initially carts were developed and allowed on courses for those with disabilities or those who couldn’t walk the course.  Production ramped up in the 1950’s and since then the golf cart has become integral to the modern game of golf.  Dedham seemed to be a hold out even as late as 1970 when carts were allowed for those with medical reasons only…which accounted for about 1000 cart rounds.  In present time that number is closer to 12,000.

That many cart rounds on an old course not designed for carts is problematic.  This is why we end up with unfortunate thin or bare turf areas where the topography concentrates traffic.

The sixth hole has a bottleneck that concentrates all 12,000 cart rounds through a narrow chute where a majority of the shots into the green are played from.  This would not be designed this way today because of the cart factor.

 

Some higher math shows that a single cart’s wear will impact about an acre and a half.  So a busy day of golf carts (40 to 60) will impact 56 to 85 acres if evenly spread out.  A cart with golfers and equipment is about 1400 lbs and has a higher psi than a greensroller (5.7 vs. 5.2).  So take that and compress it into a small area, the ground becomes compacted and turf starts to die.  This why we have made the 6th hole and the 9th hole cart path only in the past…the landing areas became compacted and thin without traffic control.

Then there are the cart ropes we install on the cart path edges…without them (sometimes even them) carts pull off and create bare areas next to the paths.  Below is a collection of photos showing what happens without ropes near greens and tees.

There are some who think nothing of what the effects of their cart traffic will cause.

Without some sort of control, carts will remove the turf from the area next to the paths. This is a close up of the picture above that shows that he was not the first golfer to have the idea of pulling up next to the green.  Parking areas at greens and tees tend to grow like this without ropes or curbing holding traffic on the path.

One day’s worth of traffic at Castle Pines in Colorado (thanks to Sean McCue’s Blog).  If ropes are not put up to control this, it would eventually become a compacted bare earth road.  Without ropes we would have similar areas on 3, 4, 6, 9, 10…to name a few.

As the G&G Chairman mentioned at opening dinner, this golf course will be the best that it can be when a partnership is formed by the people who care about the course (members) and those who care for the course.  According to the chairman, ropes will be removed once there is no danger of turf loss.  This means that there has to be a new cart culture at the club that keeps all four wheels on the paths at all times and signage becomes adequate enough to prevent turf damage.  Courses that have the highest level of maintenance all have cart restrictions of some sort…think locally about The Country Club, Boston Golf Club, and Old Sandwich.  It will be a matter of all of us finding a combination of ropes, signage, and education that allows us to have the best possible maintained course with the most access.

Special thanks to Cody Beckley from Nutter’s Crossing on his blog post giving us the tone and context for this posting.

Fescue Management

Dedham has many areas that are too rough to mow, the slopes are too severe to mow, too wet to mow regularly, or would look ratty and eventually dusty if we tried to maintain them as rough.  This is why we let certain areas of the course naturalize.

Tan waves of fescue seedhead swaying in the wind.  It is an image that harkens back to the origins of the game.  It adds contrast and definition to the irrigated turf of the actual golf hole.  It is good for the environment in many ways including adding a habitat that doesn’t exist in the abundance it once did when farms dotted the New England landscape, it requires little water, fewer fossil fuels from less mowing, and no fertilizer.  And yet it is not low maintenance.

Just just let an area grow up to seed by not mowing it will not, in most cases, provide the surface that we are looking for as far as playability and aesthetics.  It is a weed free stand of fescue that we are looking for, yet if we maintain this correctly we have a thin stand of fescue with a lot of gaps and bare soil…in other words a nice invitation to weeds.  In addition, unless the area is on gravel or sand where the fescue has a competitive advantage, we are fighting wet soils with eons full of weed seed.  In New England, these areas left to their devices would evolve into thorny plants, brush, and sumac and then into a forest.  These areas take a good deal of managing.

This is a picture of clumps of fescue with the quackgrass that has been treated with Sethoxydim.  This will provide a great playing surface, if not treated it would be thick and unplayable.

Management is much tougher in these areas than regular turf areas because we only have a short window before the area goes to seed and we can no longer bring equipment through it without leaving any tires tracks.  April and the first part of May are our only chances to influence what this stand of turf looks like.

The first part of what we do is mow it, and we mow it low with a flail mower that cuts grooves into the surface…it thins.  We just did our last mowing this week…we time this to hopefully catch the plant as it is taking energy away from growing grass blades and putting it toward the seedheads.  this also promotes thinness because when we remove this leaf material the plant will not generate that much more during this season unless it rains a good deal.

The second part is the complicated mixing of treatments for removing unwanted turf types and weed types, and applying a pre emergent to prevent weeds that we think may come up during the year.  To top it off we apply a treatment to minimize ticks.

On the left side the fescue has been treated with Echelon and Sethoxydim.  Echelon is new for us this year and will help improve our pre emergent success as it treats for nutsedge pre and post as well as other weeds.  We will follow up in two weeks with a different pre emergent (Dimension) mixed with a new herbicide called Tenacity.  Tenacity is a very wide ranging herbicide and powerful, but applied a super low rates.

If it stays dry this year, or even if it is normal this year, these fescue areas will be beautiful and playable in most spots.  It has taken years of research, classes, networking, and then treating to get these areas to the point where they are almost 100% fescue and not just hay.

Watch Out for Alligators

I had this sent to me…I am going to be careful from now on because I think the 8th hole is a perfect habitat for an alligator.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/09/alligator_captu.html?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed1_HP

Range Use Tutorial

This video from the Philadelphia Cricket Club is a great tutorial on how to use our range tee to its greatest potential.  This is very well done.

How to take practice divots.

Golf has changed in the past few years and we have seen this industry wide…golfers are spending more time on the practice tee and less time on the golf course.  This makes sense as people’s time is more precious and spending an hour on the range is a reasonable alternative to spending four or five hours on the golf course.

DCPC has seen this change as well.  This factor combined with the elimination of range fees has lead to more use on our range than it can really comfortably handle.  For good turf conditions, for everyone all season long it will take a partnership between the golfers, the pro shop staff, and the grounds staff.