Friday, January 04, 2013
The turf department certainly hopes everyone enjoyed the holiday season. Our team was able to put the finishing touches on a few projects and are now currently working on new ones. Our team installed the wire to the fan locations on holes 3, 4, and 6. The calculations are complete and the wire has been ordered for the installation to holes 10, 11, and 13. If you brave the cold weather, you will see that work beginning over the next few weeks. Ground poles that hold the fans in place will be installed soon and we will be very prepared for the fan installations when they arrive early this spring.
2012 proved to be a good year for the golf course and was unusually warm. We began with a very mild winter and temperatures near 80 degrees in March. This was great for the TifSport tees and fairways. The collars struggled coming out of dormancy and we had a few issues throughout the summer on greens #3, 4, 6, 10, 11 and 13. This is the reason that these greens have been selected for new fans. I think it is apparent that the fans installed early in the year on #1, #15 and the On Deck Putter had great results. As far as the collars, we continued our aggressive aeration, topdressing and fertility programs and have moved to ride mowing greens in the colder months to alleviate stress and traffic. The putting greens and #9 will continue to be walk mowed due to space restrictions around these greens. These practices should yield better results in 2013.
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| This picture illustrates the lower impact that the riding mowers have on
the collars. You can see how the three tire tracks are the only thing
that impact the collars. These soft tires impact the collar with no
turning (near the green) and really reduce wear and tear. The cutting units are lowered
onto the putting surface so those rollers never impact the collar. |
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| The walkmowers, by design, are rear drum driven. This rear drum impact the collar on every pass and must be turned in the collar. This leads to a lot of wear and tear. TifSport, the turf used for the collars, is very susceptible to traffic damage. The design of the green complexes specifically in relation to the proximity of the bunkers around the greens leads to more wear and tear directly around the greens. | | | | |
A new tool in our arsenal this year will be in-ground wireless soil monitors. These meters will give us information about soil moisture, temperature and salinity. They will be a great tool to help us access water needs and the affects of the fans on turf health and soil temperature. We carefully selected their placement and will use the information that we gather from these meters in conjunction with our hand held soil moisture meters. This data will be very useful with regards to hand watering, labor reduction, and irrigation management.
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| The Wireless Soil Monitoring System is 6" x 4" x 3.5" in size and is installed directly into the greens mix. This transmits information to a base station in our office about soil moisture, salinity and temperature. We installed three different monitors on the golf course on three separate greens and micro climates to give us as much different information as possible. We will be able to interpret this data to help predict hand watering and irrigation needs. |
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| This is a repeater that has to be installed to transmit the signal from the monitor back to our base station. |
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| These sensors were developed from military technology and are relatively new to the turf market. These should increase our knowledge base as well as reduce labor and water inputs. |
On very cold mornings, our team has been working on equipment maintenance and golf course amenity refurbishment. Winter maintenance is moving right along led by our Equipment Manager John Anderson. Our assistant superintendents and crew members have lent a hand when possible but nothing leaves the shop without a thorough inspection from John. It is a great opportunity for these team members to learn about the art of equipment maintenance from a veteran like John. We are beginning the work on the hardscaping around the water coolers on 4 and 8 today. Tree work will be held to a minimum this year with our team only removing dead trees and underbrush. Our main goals for the winter 2013 will be the installation of the fan wire and the installation of drainage on holes 3, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 16.
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| Our team cleans, sands, repairs, and paints all hazard stakes, benches, bird houses, on-off posts, ball washers, tee markers and other course amenities. |
The beginning of the 2013 golf season is not far away. Our large aeration process is currently scheduled for March 4-8 and should take between 4 and 5 weeks to recover depending on the weather. Fans should all be installed by the end of April and sod projects will begin soon thereafter. Our main project this spring will be renovating the entrance road to the club. Irrigation, turf, and new ornamental beds need to be installed. The 2013 season will provide its own challenges and opportunities for improvement. Our team looks forward to these opportunities and is readying the golf course for the challenges. Happy New Year and here's to a great 2013.
