Spring 2014 Course Update

 As the brutal Winter of 13-14 ever so slowly turns to Spring we are all anxious to get out on the course. Many are wondering what the condition of the course is in and how much injury may be present. The purpose of this letter is to provide you with the latest information I have, photos of what the greens look like now, and our near future plans for recovery. This letter will likely precede the April Skokie News where I have detailed types of winter injury we may have received and our efforts to minimize these over the past few months.

A quick reminder for all, especially those whom resided in warmer climes the past few months, we have just been through one of the snowiest and coldest winters on record.  We received approx. 80” of snow, a few occasional warm periods which caused some snow melt, and many periods of well below freezing as well as, well below zero temperatures.  These occasional fluctuations in temperature and snow changing to ice periods are likely what led to some of the injury we are seeing and you can see in the photos below.  In spite of snow and ice removal on three separate occasions we apparently could not prevent some winter damage, to primarily the Poa annua grass component on our putting greens.

Our greens are a mixture of many varieties of creeping bentgrass and many bio-types of Poa annua and each of these have varying tolerances to cold and ice and right now these variances are clearly apparent. I feel that a fair amount of many of our greens will recover with time, sun, warmth, manipulating covers as needed, and many other cultural practices we’ll employ. In the most severe cases, and probably areas on most greens, we will need to reestablish turf and we’ll employ aeration, spiking, seeding, plugging, small sod patching, pigments and green sand topdressing to warm the soil, and covering to protect seedlings. We may have to begin the season with temporary greens on some holes and I will assure you now that where this is necessary we will provide good quality temporary surfaces.

Much more information will be forthcoming and again please look for more information in my  ‘Clippings” column and also by following me on Twitter @scc1897, or on this blog where my "tweets" are posted.

This is the worst winter kill I have seen in my twenty-four winters here at Skokie CC and thirty-six total years as a Superintendent. It would be a great time to have pure bentgrass greens and fairways, as bentgrass is much more resistant to winter injury, but we do not have pure bentgrass and so we have some work to do bringing our greens back to quality condition. We’ll get through this in time and we’ll get it done and hopefully with as little inconvenience as possible to you but I cannot say that there will not be some difficult times ahead and so I ask for your understanding and appreciate your patience during this very challenging and potentially lengthy recovery period. Thank you very much in advance.

Photos of each green follows and regular updates will be coming in the weeks ahead. Photo's of fairway areas will be forthcoming as weather warms and we can then ascertain extent of injury.

*WARNING - The images you are about to see can be Disturbing! Excessive viewing can lead to Insomnia, Hypertension, Depression, Anxiety, Irritability, Stress, Mood Swings, and other psychological and physiological conditions...all of which have been experienced by this author!  These will, however, hopefully all pass in a short time with no permanent lasting affects!

Note: You can click on images to enlarge. Then click X in upper right corner to minimize.

No. 1 Green. Significant injury across top portion. View across green rt to left. Many spots will recover, spot seeding will be necessary.

No. 2 Green. Half of left side injured. Most spots should recover.

 

No. 3 Green. Some ares will recover but large amount will likely need overseeding. This has been a ice / crown hydration injured green in the past.

No. 4 Green.  Swale area injured. Some areas will recover, some will need overseeding.

 

No. 5. Green. Looks worse than it will be after dormancy break. Most injury should recover. Photo really shows tolerance of bentgrass to winter extremes.

No. 6 Green. Potentially the most injured of all greens. Much of this will require overseeding & reestablishment.

No. 7 Green. Perhaps a close second to no. 6 in degree of severity of injury.

View back rt to front left.

No. 8 Green. Actually only this area beyond bunker injured. Should recover early.

No. 9 Green. These areas are severely damaged. Overseeding needed for sure!

No. 10 Green. Center portion injured. 

Most of this should recover with minimal overseeding required.

No. 11 Green. Injury throughout. 

All of our North facing greens injured even though we removed snow/ice repeatedly!

Significant overseeding work needed here.

No. 12 Green. Injury in swale areas at back of green. Most of this should recover.

No.13 Green. Not unlucky here! Very nice condition. No injury on green at all. This is the typical appearance of all of our greens most years.

No. 14 Green. Very nice also. No injury on green at all.

No. 15 Green. Very nice as well. No lasting injury here.

No.16 Green. Injury through swale running back right to front left. Most spots will recover.

 

No.17 Green. Off colored throughout. Much of this should respond favorably. Some areas will need overseeding.

No. 18. Back right is most injured spot on this green Other portions will likely recover but area lower left corner of photo will need overseeding.

So as you have now seen, I wasn't joking about the Disturbing Images! I also, as I mentioned several times, feel that many of these injured areas will recover in a short time. The most damaged areas in contrast, generally the lowest portions of swale or run-off areas, will require aeration, spiking, overseeding, frequent covering, and lots of TLC to restore to health, quality, putting surfaces.

We've had this happen before, though not nearly to this extent, but regardless we restored the damage in a reasonable amount of time. We can manipulate temperatures somewhat by covering, double covering, pigments, and colored sand & organic mixtures, but the weather still plays the greatest role in this regard.

In 2009 we had winter injury to a few greens, no.11 was one and is shown below:

 No. 11 Green, Mar.26, 2009 Severe ice / crown hydration damage

Approx. 1 month later, after aerating, spiking, overseeding, & frequent covering the area had significantly improved. Another couple weeks later (6-7 total) the area was completely recovered.

While past performance is not necessarily indicative of future performance, based on our experience and with reasonable weather cooperation, we should be well on the road to recovery within a month and hopefully near complete recovery by mid-late May. 

I'll keep you posted.

What a Difference a Year Makes!

It's a cold, and now very wet start to the 2013 golf season! If we can even call it started yet!
Last year at this time (for the period from March 1 through April 18), we had had over 30 plus days with high temperatures over 60 including a few 70's and almost a week of 80's. Also, it was dry, course spring clean-up was complete, projects were getting addressed, turf was growing, and most importantly players were out enjoying the game!
What a difference a year makes! This year it' been downright cold, we've had maybe a few days over 60 degrees, none above 70, few days of sunshine, many days of rain and now the past 24 hours or so we've had over 4 inches. Needless to say it's a mess and will put a real damper (literally) on our course work and improvement tasks planned for this late spring.

The day in pictures follows: Remember you can click on photo to enlarge, then exit the photo by clicking on X at top right corner of your screen, to return to blog.

At beginning of #8 Fairway

 A panoramic view of hole #11 

 No. 13. Now a continuous pond from tee to green

 Hole #14

 Normal level is 3 feet lower in our Irrigation Channel

 Not a floating bridge but today it looks like one!

 Hole #3. Channel is normally very narrow here, (between tree in foreground and group of trees left of it) and Willow in distance is normally right of Channel!

 Willows like water but this is a bit excessive!

 The diversion culvert couldn't handle it all so water flowed over earthen dam. Good thing it has a concrete wall in it or it would be gone!

 Not getting to #4 tee for a while!

 Or #3 Green for that matter!

 I do love our bunkers in times like these. They drain very well and the flat sand doesn't wash off edges nor slopes as sand isn't placed very high up on faces

We'll have plenty of clean-up to do after water recedes...as well as re-doing many areas where we had already overseeded and spread peat. 

We'll have plenty of paths to repair / restore as well.

There is a silver lining in that gray cloud that dropped all this rain and that is that it's April, it's still cool, soil temps are still low, sunlight intensity is low, it's cloudy...and we did get our growth regulator application out before this event...all good with the saturated conditions now present. Warm temps, warm soil, intense sun...we would have a much greater potential for turf loss! This flooding and the generally wet spring could result in shallower root development and reduced drought tolerance going forward but I think we may be fortunate that this flooding is happening now rather than a month or two from now!

Now, I'd like to see about that drought tolerance! Much easier to add than to take it away here in our low lying flood plain!

Summer's Intensity Yields

To begin, Yes this is long overdue! I suppose I could say it's been one of those very difficult summers where I had very little time to spend on my computer, and I would be entirely accurate. In fact I could say that I'm quite sure I spent less time in my office than in any summer ever in the past, and the various piles of magazines and product info. pamphlets stacked throughout my office, that I've yet to read, are a daily reminder! It was a summer where it was much easier to communicate using Twitter, where I could send a picture and a brief note daily or more often. Over 400 times to be exact and most related to course activities. So those that follow me or check in here in the Twitter section have kept up to date with course happenings this summer.

It was for sure a record setting year. One of the earliest starts to the season that I can remember, and of course we all know most of the story with 43 days of temperatures over 90 degrees (and counting) and a half dozen of which were over 100! This is certainly abnormal and well above the desirable range of our cool season turf species of creeping bentgrass, poa annua, bluegrass, fescue, and ryegrass. And, if high temperature stress wasn't enough, a serious lack of rainfall added additional stress and required nearly constant monitoring and frequent (much more so than I've experienced in the past) syringing, to cool the turf and prevent permanent wilt and turf loss. Too many times I watched turf go from green, well hydrated, in the humid mornings, to purple, and early stages of wilt, in the dry, windy afternoons. Also, Murphy's Law was in effect as it seemed to happen even more often on Saturday's and Sunday's when the course was full of players making my syringing processes even more challenging and mentally stressful! We do try very hard, all the time, to provide firm play conditions, and regulating irrigation is common in this effort. As such, having to rapidly move about the course, syringing to prevent wilt and turf loss, is certainly not something new. This year, however, it seemed like we were chasing wilt nearly every weekend!

It was a nerve-racking year indeed but as we headed into the second week of August relief came in the form of both rain and cooler temperatures. And, although we've had a few more hot, humid days since earlier in Aug., the intensity is shorter with waning day length, lower overnight temperatures, and thus far occasional rainfall. We're now entering the optimum time for restoring turf health and density though a variety of cultural practices such as fertilization, aeration, topdressing, seeding, or sodding. We've already begun many of these practices and after Labor Day more such activities will intensify. Fortunately, we survived the summer quite well but some areas do need some expanded work, mostly rough areas, and right now we are beginning to address these areas (seeding / sodding) and will continue into the fall. I'll try to blog more often as we perform these various tasks and projects such as fairway expansion, green surround sod replacement where needed, test area bentgrass control and overseeding in rough areas, and likely a few other projects.   

Some Summer Recap photos and comments follow:

 

Saw this about 6 times this summer. 6 TOO MANY!

 

 The summer began with a little pond wall repair project at #12 tee! Old tiebacks gave way and wall collapsed into pond 

  After excavation of soil and lots of unexpected concrete blocks old steel was righted and cut off at water level

New steel channels being locked together and vibrated into soil

 Installing new and improved tiebacks

 Finished product. Today area grassed but heavy weed encroachment may require additional grassing work this fall

 While we were at it with excavator on site we pulled tilted outcrop stone from west side, added new support beams and gravel, then reset level

 Finished product on west side. Today fully grassed with quality fine fescue.

As work was undertaken on the pond wall repair, 4 forward tees were constructed and opened in early June

 
Several cart paths were renovated. Old fabric and loose brick chips was removed and replaced with new crushed red granite.

 
New path to No. 3 Forward Tee

 
Renovated path at Half Way House. New material stays in place much better and is less dusty than former crushed brick material.

 
New routing of path at #18 Tee, now runs through tall grass instead of directly in front of tee. No traffic in front of tee now eliminates worn unsightly area.

 
Finished product with repositioned tall rough and re-routed path

Right about this time, the 4th of July (and the 5th), temperatures exceed 100 degrees and from that time forward temperatures remained above normal for about six weeks. Moisture deficit was firmly in place by this time too, actually since much earlier in spring. 


Saw this sign in a business and thought, regarding the weather challenges this year, 'Isn't this the Truth'!
There was lots of it every morning!

 
This was a common sight this year and thankfully we have an outstanding irrigation system that allows us to keep conditions as dry and firm as possible, for playability sake, and yet provide "rescue" syringing and watering, in a rapid manner, to prevent serious turf damage and loss.

 
When we keep it dry, and the humidity suddenly drops, turf can purple showing signs of wilt.

 
If we don't get water on it quickly (such as on a Sat. afternoon when the course if full of players and we're desperately trying to syringe and cool off all fairways but we don't get to all areas in time), at the early wilt stage, cart traffic will crush plant cells, causing destruction and turf loss. Fortunately this was the only area this happened, at beginning of fairway on #17.

 
We battled plenty of disease this year as well, Summer Patch, Brown Patch, Dollar Spot, Fairy Ring and others...we saw them all at one point or another.

Fortunately, Pythium, one of the most rapid and destructive turf diseases (common in hot, wet, conditions) was kept well controlled through plant protectants (dry weather helped too) but still found it's way onto the range tee, an area that is watered frequently to germinate seed planted each night.

Speaking of wet, we did have a few wet moments this year...climbing into the water to attach lines to remove a cart that was driven into the pond at #12...

and a Jeep that found it's way into the ditch at #13 tee.

 
 Both vehicles...


Successfully extracted and both drivers, fortunately, uninjured...but likely to drive a bit safer in the future!

 We though we might have to employ our SCC Grounds Crew constructed SCC 'Kon Tiki' for above extractions, but it was ultimately used only for it's intended purpose, the Hampton's Party.

Jazz Band getting ready for their float trip.

Before crowd showed the ducks enjoyed a little evening music.

 The stress...and response (more hand watering) continued through approx. Aug. 9-10 when we received some quality rainfall (slow, steady) and temperatures began to fall to more reasonable levels.

 

With the summers intensity now behind us we're focusing on repairing a few areas...fortunately only a few! Through aeration, spiking, seeding, and /or sod patching where necessary.

A nice seed germination 'catch' on a worn, thin spot in the green expansion area on #13.

As I mentioned earlier, we are now in the period of repair, recovery, maintenance, and improvement on many turf areas through aeration, seeding, topdressing, core planting, sodding, and more. Essentially, it's planting time! I hope to blog a bit more frequently now that I have a bit more time to spend in front of the computer but I'd still much rather be out on the course tweeting tasks and improvement progress on a daily basis! Follow me on Twitter @scc1897 or check back here on the blog often and view my tweets in the Twitter section. Happy Labor Day to All!