What are all those dead spots on 14 green?

If you have played golf over the last 6 months you may have notices some brown, dead spots across #14 green.  These spots are irregular shaped brown areas, where the grass has been completely killed, and the outside edge of the dead spot is green healthy grass.  These dead spots are actually caused by a Blue Heron.  The large birds like to fish around the pond on #14, and as he walks and flys across the green, he poops all over the place!  These droppings are very large and look like white paint splattered everywhere when they are fresh and new.  Over time the waste kills all the grass it comes in contact with, killing large areas of the putting green at times.  The pictures below show examples of the damage the Heron causes!

Here are two spots killed from Heron droppings, I put a can of wasp spray to help show how large these areas can be.

Another spot killed by a Heron.  On the day I took these pictures there were 13 different dead spots across 14 green!  

How do we fix these dead spots?  We use plugs from our nursery green which has healthy grass, and simply remove the damaged turf.  The new, healthy plug is then inserted and leveled to the same height of the green.  The picture above shows the plugs we used to fix the dead spots from the picture above with the wasp spray bottle. The plugs are noticeable the day after they are inserted in the green, but quickly grow together and blend into the green.

So what can we do to prevent the Heron from damaging the green?  Not a whole lot really, but we are going to try anything possible!  That means Heron decoys positioned by the green on 14 to try and prevent the birds from getting comfortable.  Blue Herons are said to be very territorial, and when there is another Heron on the pond they will not land or come to that same body of water.  We have purchased a few Heron decoys to see if we can have any luck!  Our staff repaired the green completely, and then we installed the decoys.  We plan to watch the green over the next week or two and see if the decoys will help reduce the Heron damage! 

Another picture of the Heron decoys, we have them positioned on both sides of #14 green!

Here is a picture of a live Blue Heron fishing around 3 green!  This picture was taken the same day we put the decoys out  on hole #14.  We see damage from feces on #3 green as well occasionally, but not near as bad as #14!

Please remember to fix your ball marks!

Big Dead Tree on #11

A few weeks ago we took the chance to remove a large dead tree on hole #11.  When I say large, I mean very large!  The diameter of the tree measured 5 feet across!  This Oak tree had been on this property for at least 100 years, but almost all the leaves were gone and it was starting to shed some large branches which have become a danger.

You can see from this picture the old tree has seen better days.  Due to concerns about safety we decided to remove the tree and clean up the area.

This golf cart is 4 feet wide.  The tree trunk measured 5 feet wide!

A crane was needed to help the tree crew remove the large branches and trunk.

All the branches are gone now!  Just the massive trunk is left, and it was quite a job to get it all cut up!  Took some pretty large chainsaws and large equipment to complete the task.

Here is a video of all the equipment working at one time to cut down the tree.  Pretty cool to see all the equipment work, and to see what can be accomplished with nice equipment!  It took the company about 5 hours complete this job start to finish!  We counted around 100 rings on the tree stump, so this tree had definitely seen some interesting stuff, both good and bad tee shots on hole #11!

Greens recovering quickly!

Aerification has come and gone, and now the greens have been trying to battle the extended summer heat.  The hot weather has actually been a huge help on the greens as it provides great growing weather for the grass to fill in the holes.  During this recovery process we have to water more than we would typically like because the holes can cause the greens to dry out more rapidly.  The water does however help the grass to grow more vigorously by not allowing stressful periods to occur.  It has only been 3 weeks since we punched the greens, but the holes are almost fully recovered! 

Here is a picture looking straight down on the green the day after we aerified on September 5th.  You can see there is quite a bit of sand on the surface, and almost all the holes are full of fresh new sand we added before we punched the holes.  

Here is a picture from September 12th, one week after the photo above and one week after punching!  See how much recovery can happen in just 1 week!  The holes are still visible but have started to grow over.  The sand has worked itself into the greens profile and the grass has grown through.  It just takes a little bit of patience during these times but the grass will come back stronger than before!

One week later on the 19th, just a little over 2 weeks after aerification, and the greens are almost fully healed!  Holes are now much harder to see, and the grass has grown back to create a much better putting surface.  The greens are still not all the way recovered, but putting on the greens is much improved!  Once we start to have some continuous night time temperatures in the low 60's or 50's we will start to see even more improvement.  For only 3 weeks after aerification we are in a great spot and the greens are very healthy!  We will have a great Fall golf season, we just need some rain!!!

Please be careful of Lightning

Remember to always take the lightning alarm seriously!!!!!

Late last night a thunderstorm came through and dropped over a half an inch of much needed rain on the golf course!  One casualty of this storm we recognized this morning was a large oak tree on MCC Club Drive was struck by lightning.  The lightning blew all the bark off of the lower part of the trunk, throwing large chunks of bark up to 40 feet from the base of the tree.  We hope this tree does not die from the strike, but more often than not the lightning damage is a mortal wound.    

Here is a look at the damage to the center of the tree.  This union of all the branches is looks like it took a direct hit!

A far away look shows the tree compared to all the others.  Obvious to tell which one it is!

Get-It-Out Lift

If you have played golf in the last week you probably have noticed the black rings around the bottom of the flag stick.  These rings are called Get-Out-Lift, and are designed to help remove the ball from the cup without sticking your hands in the hole.  With the rules of golf changing this year allowing the flag stick to remain in while putting, many people have adapted to the new rule.  However, when putting with the flag sticks in, sometimes golfers will reach their hand in to get the ball without removing the flag stick.  This can cause the edges of the cup to get damaged if not careful, and we have noticed more wear than usual this summer.  To see if we can reduce any damage to the cups, we have decided to try the Get-Out-Lift.  Please let us know your feedback as you use these new devices and let us know your thoughts!   

Verticutting Fairways

Fairway maintenance took our full attention over the last week!  Trust me, the last thing any Golf Course Superintendent wants to do is tear up beautiful grass!  Sometimes, it takes a little roughing up the stone to make it shine, and that is the outlook we used on the fairways this week.  So, why do we verticut the fairways?  What is a verticutter?  Will it ever grow back?  Those are all great questions I have been asked over the last week, and I wanted to shed some light on this dirty, dusty process.

So what is verticutting?  Verticutting is defined as vertical mowing, which uses blades orientated straight up and down to cut slits into the turf profile and remove thatch which builds up over time.  The thatch can lead to a "puffy" or "spongy" turf surface which does not create a very consistent fairway lie.  Bermuda grass grows very aggressively and naturally creates a lot of thatch.  By removing accumulating thatch each year, we can help to keep our fairways growing tight and consistent like carpet.  This is the goal anyway!

We choose to do this process in the middle of the summer time when the weather is hot, and the bermuda grass is most actively growing.  Some of the the first fairways we verticut on Monday, July 15th, have already shown very rapid recovery.  Within a few weeks the grass grow back it will hardly be noticeable anything was done.  Below the turf surface we have created many new growing points  during the process, growing new leaf blades to fill in the voids.  The result with be a much firmer, tighter grass canopy that should improve the play of the golf course.  

Buddy looks about as excited as I am about tearing up good looking fairways!  Here is a look at the verticutter in action working on #8 fairway.

     

Here is a look at the fairways immediately after the machine goes over the turf.  The lines are cut in the turf canopy to help remove the thatch.  You can see all the excess thatch laying all over the turf surface.  I cleaned a little bit away to show the lines that are left, compared to the fairway surface before we started the process.

Big handful of the thatch and sprigs that were removed from the fairways!  A lot of material we can do without!

So how do we pick all the unwanted thatch up and remove it completely?  Well a vacuum of course!  This year we were fortunate for the Club to purchase a Multi-Vac 772, which has already proved to be very handy!  The vacuum runs behind the verticutter and sucks up almost all the debris left over.  You can see in the pictures the before and after of where the tractor drives, almost all the debris is removed and stored in the hopper to be dumped off site.  

View from the tractor pulling the vacuum.  Green grass showing is the first pass made with the vacuum!  Works Great!

After the vacuum does its job, it is time to mow the grass to start to even it back up.  It takes a few cuttings to get everything smoothed out.  After we mow, the blowers will come behind and clean up all the loose material remaining.

This is a photo of #8 fairway, the day after we finished the entire verticutting process.  While the fairway is brown and not nearly as green and pretty as when we started, it is still an acceptable surface to play golf on.  Within 2-3 weeks it will be hard to tell we did anything at all, and everything should look much better!