Kiltie Days Recap

With a golf season thus far of up and down temperatures and frequent rainfall, we have to cross our fingers prior to any event and hope for full cooperation from Mother Nature. We certainly got our wish with Kiltie Days this past weekend! Aside from almost an inch of rain on Wednesday, the tournament weather conditions on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were mild and dry and about as good for golf as we could get. From all accounts I think it was one of the most successful Kiltie Days to date!

Prior to any major event such as Kiltie Days, or the Derby, there is a significant amount of course preparation involved. We schedule maintenance activities to peak at the same time as the event. Topdressing, plant protection (disease and insect management), growth regulation, and detailing programs (edging sprinkler heads, markers, and drains, edging cart paths, filling divots, removing runners/grass clumps in bunkers, removing sucker sprouts on trees, and more) are all addressed. And, of course, mowing of all primary play areas is performed each day and repeated often, as is the case for greens. Double mowing each morning, followed by greens rolling, and single mowing each evening (also often followed by rolling) is employed to provide the ball roll speed challenge that competitors enjoy, or at least think they enjoy!

 Quality mowing begins with sharp and well adjusted mowers. Here Mike (and his friend Gato) inspect a bedknife in the process of being sharpened

Rafa, and Miguel (in background on bunker rake machine), smooth and adjust depths of sand

Mowing and Rolling equipment head out for tournament evening tasks

In addition to these course maintenance activities, other items such as erecting the scoreboard, finishing up projects ( at this time #5 Mound & the Half Way House fence/landscape replacement) and other assorted tasks such building and setting the target "gong" for this year's Kiltie Days, add up to a very busy pre-tournament period. It's always a rather feverish and sometimes very challenging time for us, but when the tournament is underway and players are enjoying the competition, it's also a very rewarding feeling knowing that our efforts have made a significant contribution to the success of the event.

 

Mound project at #5 after hauling material and shaping

Mound seeded, drainage installed, & final prep for sod 

 Sod, seed, and mulch blanket in place

Resolving one of several drainage issues along haul road route

Mulch blanket installed post seeding along length of #5

After all work was complete we came in this morning to see this.

Do you suppose it was the rope, or the bright orange ribbons, or the different color sod that this cart driver was oblivious too???

This pix shows the damage a little better. Just thrills me to have to repair this!

 Apparently this rope is not visible enough either!

Fescue beginning to emerge above blanket. We intentionally seeded at a low rate to see if this tall rough area will be more playable than other such areas. Establishment will be slower but it may be a benefit long term.

A quick project at Half Way House. These overgrown shrubs and deteriorated fence needed to be changed.

New fence, enlarged stoop, new shrubs, more road space, much better! 

Beautiful day and nice crowd watch playoffs for this year's Kiltie Days Championship.

With a few weeks now before tournament preparations for our next "major", The Skokie Derby, begin, we'll keep plenty busy with routine mowing, trimming, raking, topdressing, plant protection,and more and we'll add a few projects or two such as drainage in a few places and re-grassing a portion of the bank at No. 9 pond.

I'll keep you posted of these activities.

Weather, Project Challenges

Over the last several weeks we've certainly had our share of weather woes. It's been unusually cold and cloudy, for what seems like an eternity, and then there was a few clear days of warm, near record high, temperatures. The welcomed warmth was followed by a few days of near record low temperatures, and now we're back to cool, cloudy and, most recently, extremely wet conditions. It seems like we've had spring, summer (though not much) early winter, and fall like conditions in the span of only a month! The good news is that through all this it's mostly been just mildly uncomfortable and may have only slightly affect playability and cart use, but it's not devastating weather conditions like in other parts of the country where floods and violent tornadoes have destroyed property and tragically, many lives. We should all keep those, whom have been afflicted by these life changing catastrophes, in our thoughts and prayers. In comparison our minor inconveniences are really quite insignificant.

We've had plenty of activity and challenge lately, with normal course maintenance, project work, and now this week, with excessive rainfall, but overall we are making good progress in all of these areas.

Course Maintenance:
Extended cool, cloudy, and wet conditions (at times) have significantly delayed seed germination in various rough areas where turf was very thin coming our of dormancy. Many of these areas were aerated, seeded, and covered with peat moss (to retain moisture and enhance germination) several weeks ago but are just now finally starting to germinate and establish. Rust disease as well as drought conditions last October likely contributed to the thinning we experienced and hopefully this recent overseeding as well as nutrient applications will soon provide good recovery.

 Seed finally germinates. Notice the tufts of seedling. These are growing in the aerification holes.

The cooler temperatures, and windy and wet conditions through much of our so call "spring" have also caused delay in many typical tasks such as applying broadleaved weed control products, topdressing fairways (performed on about a third of our fairways), planting annual flowers, and some of our routine mowing programs. We're making steady progress in all these areas but we certainly have had more delays than in typical spring periods.

Project Work:
The Paddle Tennis Project began on May 13th with demolition of the old building and wooden decking and site preparation including removal of all the concrete piers which formerly held the old courts. The court contractor disassembled the courts but we assisted in moving  30 - 6'x30' court sections to a staging area where they will remain until a later time when portions will be returned to use.

 Court section being transported to staging area

Pulling old concrete piers - a semi-truck load of them

Prior to excavation beginning, a couple poor quality trees were removed in the vicinity. This one was ready to fall without our help!

 The hollowed out portion was filled with these huge wood borer larva. A delicacy in some countries!

After the court decks were removed excavation for the building basement took place (on Thursday and Friday, May 19-20) and on Friday my staff, using two of our dump trucks and two larger capacity rental trucks, hauled the excavated material to the site behind No. 5 Green. While the soil material was delivered (over 180 loads!) I began shaping it and blending into the existing berm. At 9 o'clock that evening we had completed hauling of approx. 750 yards of material and had it all shaped fairly close to finish grade. It was a long two days that day but we wanted to take advantage of relatively dry ground conditions and dry weather at the time, and without stopping at all except to fill fuel tanks, we tackled the task at hand. I am indeed grateful to my staff for this accomplishment. Had we been delayed just a couple days we would still be waiting to move this material as this week's rainfall would have prevented any movement of heavy equipment and any shaping.

 We were all too focused on the task at hand to photograph the excavation, hauling, and shaping but this photo shows material in place and shaped. Hard to believe that this is the equivalent of about 75 semi-loads of soil.

Paddle House Basement - Where No. 5 berm soil originated.

At the present time we await dry conditions so that we can finish grade, seed, and seed mulch the berm and the haul roads. We're at a bit of a stand still right now but there is no question that with the material in place and shaping complete we have progressed quite well on this project. Yesterday I tried to work the haul road with an implement which scarifies and smooths but hit a bit of an unexpected soft spot and, well, the picture tells the story. I think I'll give it a couple days to dry out a bit!

 Operator (that would be me) thought that he couldn't get this machine stuck. He was wrong!

Some gravel placed under the tracks and a helping pull from our 4X4 dump truck solved this little dilemma!

Excessive Rainfall:

We had several days of rain this week (hence the problem I had above - really, it was only a little water on the surface when I crawled over it - but I hit a pocket of soft mush and dropped about 2 feet!) and this resulted in nearly two days of lost course work and a delay in continuing progress on the No. 5  berm project and haul road repair. 

 A total of 3.5 inches of rain fell Weds. and Thurs. this week.

 An all too familiar site last year... hopefully this doesn't have to be repeated again this year!

We will eventually get caught up, the course will dry out, we'll be able to finish the berm work, and then we'll move on to other tasks and projects. Lets hope we have some nice weather very soon!

Have a great Memorial Day! 

Paddle Project Begins

At the 114th Annual Meeting of Skokie Country Club last evening, the Phase 3 Improvement / Paddle Project  was overwhelmingly passed and as such brought about a whirlwind of activities for us today.  Fresh off the Cedar Shake Roof Project on the Half Way House today began another project, where the SCC Grounds & Greens Dept. got the low bid! We began bright and early this morning removing windows, doors, carpeting, electrical panels, plumbing equipment, wood decking, the water meter, and gas lines, and what then followed was the crushing of the building and loading into refuse boxes for removal. While this work was in progress the water main contractor began installation of a new 8" main, the gas company continued work on providing a new gas supply line, the paddle court contractors began disassembling the courts, and surveyors laid out work for the building foundation excavation. Soil was dug and hauled, gravel delivered, and refuse boxes switched were switched out. It was indeed quite the hub of activity near the Grounds Operation Center today and I'm not sure we could have had anything more going on in one place!

 Hopefully the following photos give you at least a glimpse of what transpired today:

 

The calm before the storm! Equipment ready for action

Jacob saw cutting to re-route power service

 

 Decking dis-assembly and Building Layout

 Deck removed

 North Shore Gas directional boring new supply line

And then the real fun stuff begins...and ends... about 15 minutes later!

 Building gone and neatly packed into 6, 30 yard roll off boxes. Approx. 70% of material will be recycled. Water main installed and ready for pressure test and chlorination. Cone is where new building water tap will occur.

It was a very productive day at SCC and I can't thank my staff enough for their hard work and determination. Kudos to newly established SCC Demolition Experts...Jacob, Gus, Alicus, Robbie, and Devin. And to Ryan, Steve, and the rest of our Grounds Staff for "keeping the fort" and making final preparations to the course for the first golf event, the Elmer Muffwinkle, set for tomorrow. Great work guys!

After a bit more clean-up and the court contractors finish their removal work, the excavation for the basement and foundation for the new paddle facility will begin. When this begins next week, we will be transporting approx. 600 yards of soil to the area behind number 5 green where we will be adding on to the existing berm in this area (behind 5 green, left side of hole 6) and eventually grassing with fescue, and native grasses such as Little blue-stem, and a few clumps of Indian grass. I'll be entering a new post shortly detailing this work. 

Miserable Wet Weather

Ok the weather can start to improve any time now!
Cloudy, cold, wet, and general gloomy conditions has been the norm of late and we've actually had rain on nearly half of the days of this month. This excessive moisture and resulting soft soil conditions has really put a damper (pun intended) on many course activities. Topdressing (both greens & fairways), overseeding of thinned rough areas, rolling, nutrition and plant protectant applications, general mowing of many areas, and more, have all been delayed due to the saturated soil conditions this month.

Aside from these frustrating delays, one area of concern during excessive spring moisture periods is that root systems (that are most actively growing at this time) may fail to develop to the same density and depth as when soil moisture is dryer. This can then result in a root system that cannot utilize deeper soil moisture later in the year when water is needed to a greater extent and a plant that is more prone to the stresses of summer such as heat, drought, and traffic from equipment and players. We cannot change the weather but we can continue to perform the tasks we already perform such as:

• Aeration - To create pore spaces and encourage root growth.
• Topdressing - To eventually create a soil profile that drains more rapidly and better supports traffic when wet.
• Tree Management - Trim and thin trees to improve sunlight and air movement to aid drying after rainfall events.
• Drainage System Maintenance - Keep our current drainage system in good repair through pressure jetting to maintain functioning lines, and repair breaks and collapses as needed.
• Drainage System Additions - Adding new lines and drop inlets where appropriate. 

Now all we need is the weather to dry up so we can keep doing these things!

In spite of the wet conditions we're still managing to make progress in a few areas:

"Neither Snow, Rain, Cold, Nor Gloom of Day" will...Make us very happy!

More drainage and topdressing needed here.

Gus works on second drainage repair of this year.

Mainline pipe separation and bell-end deterioration (running under bunker - white pipe is bunker drain) in approach bunker #14. Separation is sealed to eliminate the sink hole that had developed.

Steve and Alicus (the latest member of our G&G Staff) begin installation of Cedar Shakes on the Half Way House Roof.

A Clear Sunny Day...Something we are anxiously awaiting!

Spring Course Prep & More

Course activities at this time of the year are always very busy. Spring start up tasks such as: mowing of all turf areas with increasing frequency; bunker grooming (cleaning, leveling, smoothing); fall and winter debris remnant removal; winter tree management completion (pruning and approved removals); prairie burning; placing course furnishings; early season nutrient and plant protectant treatments; overseeding rough areas; sod patching of winter damaged areas throughout course; filling and pressurizing the irrigation system; and more, are all keeping us hopping! Additionally, we always manage to have a project or two going.

The following photo's show a few of the above tasks and projects in progress:

Fairway mowers clipping off the winter coat

 Bunker Prep - Clean-up, leveling, raking

Irrigation System Pressurization - A full day process to gradually refill, purge air, and pressurize to standard operating pressure. Out of nearly 2000 sprinkler heads less than a half dozen needed repair. It's "all systems go"!

Repair of a blemish (likely from an inconsiderate deer) using hex plugs from our homegrown turf nursery. Can you tell where the plugs have been placed? I think you would agree that they match quite well.

Plug on left showing one of the benefits of deep tine aeration...enhanced root growth. Plug on right is from the damaged area with no visible roots.

 

The aforementioned turf nursery. Planted last fall. Most of this nursery was used last year to patch winter damaged areas in spring and flood damaged areas in late summer. Hope I don't need to use much of it at all this year!

 General debris clean-up proceeding well.

One of a couple current projects: Our sod squad installing sod in various areas including tree removal and winter damaged locations

 Project 2: Replacing Half Way House Roof. Here Javier and Miguel are stripping old shingles. Felt paper has been installed and we will follow with cedar shakes in lieu of asphalt shingles. 

So that's a quick glimpse of our current course work. I'll keep you posted on our projects and other course activities as they progress. Let's hope for some consistently mild weather anytime now!

A New Season Begins - Greens Open

In just a few days meteorologic spring, or the Vernal Equinox, will occur and a new season will be upon us. As is suppose to happen, the sun is rising higher on the horizon (actually the earth tilts on it's axis), daytime temperatures are becoming mild, and nighttime temperatures are remaining above freezing. Overall, it's a beautiful thing! And as such, with ground conditions reasonably dry, and covers removed yesterday (warm temps can accelerate too much growth under covers), I see no reason to not take advantage of the nice weather opportunity and roll, set hole locations, put flagsticks in, and open greens for play!

 Covers being removed for first time in 2011

This may be a record for green opening but at least this one is a desirable record. We had a year of extreme records (or near records) last year, and a winter with near record snowfall, so we might as well keep the record streak going! Hopefully we don't have any severe weather records this summer! 

If you do get a chance to play during this mild weather break, keep in mind that with this very early opening, you will still see evidence of the aeration from late last fall. In addition, the greens will not be mowed just yet, as it's likely temperatures will drop again (after all we are in Chicagoland!) and I want to keep the little extra turf cover that we now have (from the covers protecting and warming), until night time temps are consistently above freezing.

     First rolling. This settles natural soil heaving that occurs in winter and smooths surface. 

Photo shows enhanced green-up from covers on practice green and number nine green in the distance. 

Another thing to remember in the days to come is that we are in our "Cover Shuffle" period and so greens may be recovered for a few days (all depending on temperature lows) then re-opened, and then this sequence may repeat until mild temperatures prevail. In doing this we retain the advantages of the covers (early spring green-up, root and shoot growth acceleration, aeration healing, and more) and yet control growth so as too not allow excessive shoot growth.

I have much more to comment on concerning current course conditions and varied maintenance activities in progress so look for more information to follow soon but for now...Happy Spring!

GCSAA , USGA host successful Education Conference's

The Golf Course Superintendent's Assoc. of America's Education Conference continues to be a vital resource for the golf industry as 5,272 seats were filled for more than 100 seminars, Feb. 7-11 in Orlando, a 13 percent increase from 2010. "The GCSAA Education Conference continues to be the best venue for golf course superintendents to keep abreast of the latest trends in golf course management," GCSAA CEO Rhett Evans said. "I think it says a great deal about the passion our members have for education and their facilities that they travel from all corners of the nation to spend three days in seminar rooms."Content for the seminars focused on the professional development of attendees, including agronomy, business management, communication, environmental management and leadership. Numerous additional educational sessions, panel discussions, and forums that touched on such subjects as the nation's economy, diversity, media/public relations, etc., were offered as well.

Among the education offerings I attended were: a seminar titled Managing & Dealing with Winter Injury; Lessons from the Links (Judy Rankin); Magic of Teamwork (Pat Williams); and Cheers, Tears, & Fears: Hosting a Major Golf Championship. In addition to the GCSAA Conference, the USGA Green Section Conference was held during the week long activities and various season's best "Turf Tips" presentations were made. These are always educational and offered great "take home" ideas. All of these GCSAA and USGA offerings provided valuable information and ideas which I'll incorporate into our plans and programs for the golf course. The Golf Industry Show, 180,000 sq. ft. of all the latest equipment, supplies, nutrient and plant protectants, irrigation products, and essentially everything one could imagine related to golf course management, was on display for two days during the week.

 The Golf Industry Show - Everything imaginable in Golf Course Management

In addition to these sessions I was fortunate to be acknowledged at the event, Celebrating Certification, along with 44 other colleagues, for achieving 25 years of Certification. "Twenty-five percent of GCSAA's Class A members have achieved the highest level of recognition through the CGCS professional designation," said Robert M. Randquist, CGCS, who was elected GCSAA's president at the annual meeting held on the last day of the conference, Feb. 11, and was also another one of the superintendents honored for 25 years of CGCS designation. "This program requires their demonstration of a higher set of competencies in golf course management through testing and practical application. Employers can feel confident they employ a career professional who has made a strong commitment to professional development."

To qualify for GCSAA's competency-based certification program, a candidate must have at least three years experience as a golf course superintendent, be employed in that capacity and meet post-secondary educational requirements and/or continuing education points. The candidate's knowledge, skills and abilities are validated through the development of a portfolio consisting of their responses to skill statements, case-study scenarios and submission of work samples; an on-site inspection of their golf facility; and a rigorous six-hour examination covering competencies relating to agronomic, business, communication, environment and leadership domains.
 
Maintaining certified status requires renewal every five years after the initial date of certification. To fulfill certification renewal requirements, a candidate must participate in 150 hours of continuing education and professional development. There are a total of approx. 140 superintendents with 25 years or more with the CGCS designation and I am very proud to be part of this group and feel fortunate to have participated in this program and benefited from the outstanding continuing educational offerings throughout these past years.

Portions of this post and photo courtesy of GCSAA

Skokie CC Retains Audubon Certification

It's been a busy period these past couple months with: Equipment Maintenance and Refurbishment; Tree Management Activities; Snow Removal (especially clean-up of the "Blizzard of 2011"); and most recently, Attending the Golf Course Superintendents Assoc. of America's Annual Education Conference and the Golf Industry Show. I've written about a couple of these items and want to recap the latter in another, soon to be published, post, but upon my return from the GCSAA Conference, I found the following news in my mailbox and thought I would spread the good news.

It's confirmation that we have retained our Certification Status as an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary. The following letter briefly explains the program and in the near future I will post additional information about our continuing efforts in this program, but for now, the letter below should give good insight into the program.

We became Certified in 2001 and retaining this designation requires bi-annual submission of our continuing stewardship efforts, case studies of projects we have implemented, satisfactory visits from outside environmental groups, and/or extensive survey completion. It's a good bit of effort annually and at each re-certification cycle, but it show's our commitment to continually striving to improve our stewardship of our property and, in the simplest terms, it's the right thing to do!   

Remember to click on the above to enlarge and then use your browsers "back" button to return

 

More details will follow about this program, our efforts and projects over the past fifteen years or more, and potential future environmental projects I have in mind.