Brushing Greens

If you've ever watched a golf tournament on TV, more than likely you've heard an announcer use the term grain.  What they're referring to is the growth habit of the grass on the green.  The perfect green would have no grain and every grass plant would be standing perfectly upright.  Unfortunately that's typically not the case since we use creeping bentgrass as our turf selection on greens in the Northeast.  Just by hearing the name creeping bentgrass it should tell you it likes to grow laterally not so much vertically.  So in order to get the grain out of the greens we use brushes that stand the grass blades upright.  This allows the greens mowers to cut more plant material, which would normally be laying over.

This is a great picture of grain, see the difference in color.  The white color closest in the picture and the dark color  in the back of the picture show different grains.  

Here is a short video demonstrating how the greens get brushed.

 

Tee Project

An overlooked portion of the golf course that can change how a player approaches a hole are tees.  Just by changing the angle or length of the hole from the tee can make a hole play completely different.  As ball and club technology advance at an alarming rate so to does tee locations to preserve the design of golf holes.  The easiest way of doing this is to lengthen or move tees into strategic locations that bring hazards that were once in play, back into play.  This was the case for us on several holes. 

Mottin Golf Course Renovations did a fantastic job with the tee renovations.  Here are the steps for one of the tee box renovations. 

Step 1) Grading of the site for proper drainage and proper tee mix fill


Shaping the tee and tee surrounds


Step 2) The subsurface drainage was installed and then a four inch layer of tee mix(60:40 sand to peat) was compacted overtop leveling off the tee with the tee surround.  

Tee mix and drainage filled in and graded

 

Step 3) Irrigation lines were trenched using mini excavators

Trenching of irrigation lines



 

Step 4) PVC pipe and wire were laid into the trenches and hooked up to existing irrigation wiring and pipe.  The trenches were then backfilled with soil. 

 

 

 

Step 5) Sod is then placed down over the final graded tee and tee surround

 

 

Step 6) The seams of the bentgrass sod are filled with sand, which helps create a smooth surface without any breaks between the sod. 



Seams filled with sand

 Step 7) Finished product!







Bunker Tamping

Hazards were once managed with very little care, but that is not the case anymore.  Bunkers are now often raked on a daily basis to produce consistent lies.  The problem with daily raking is that it can cause the faces of the bunkers to become too soft, which can cause buried lies.  To counteract this problem we are taking on two new management practices.  The first is our daily raking method.  In the past bunkers were either raked complete, or touched up where there were any marks.  Now we've taken on the Australian method, which calls for only raking the bottom of the bunkers and not raking the sides of bunkers.  This allows the faces to harden up so the ball will roll to the bottom of the bunkers.

The sides are smoothed out using the back of a rake and the bottoms are raked  normally 

The other management practice is several times throughout the season we'll be tamping bunkers.  A vibrating plate tamper is used to compact the bunkers.  Water must be applied to the bunker first, so the sand will compact.  This process takes several days to complete as well as several workers due to it's taxing nature.  This combined with the raking method should allow any ball hit into the bunkers to find it's way to the bunker bottom.  

Watering the bunker prior to tamping 

Tamping bunker faces and bottoms

Deep Tine Greens

One of the most important cultural practices we do is deep tining greens.  This process relieves compaction and creates a deeper channel than regular core aeration, which allows the roots to dive deeper.  The main goal in the spring time for a superintendent with cool season greens is to get the deepest healthiest roots possible.  This allows us to instill higher levels of stress(i.e. double cuts, rolling, and lowering height of cut) on the plant during the summer months when the plant is emitting more energy than it can produce.  We deep tined three weeks ago and these are the results that we got, which are spectacular.  We plan on continuing this process several times throughout the season to establish a healthy root system.

Healthy white roots going down 6-7 inches 

Seeding!

Last Fall a disease known as Gray Leaf Spot wiped out a large portion of the rough around fairways including the intermediate rough.  Perennial ryegrass is highly susceptible to this disease, so we are seeding these areas in with a mixture of turf type tall fescue and some perennial ryegrass, due to it's fast germination rate.  This should help with future outbreaks of the disease.  We also are using covers in severely thinned out areas to hasten the germination process due to the early season cool temperatures.  Penn mulch, a compressed recycled paper, was also spread over the seeded areas which will help retain moisture and increase germination.

Covers sod stapled down over thinned out areas to increase germination rate

Seedlings germinating under the cover

Penn mulch spread over seeded areas to help keep seed moist 

Fairway Drainage

Hole number 11 is notorious for staying wet almost year round, due to a lack of surface drainage.  Instead of reshaping the entire fairway for better surface drainage we've chosen to install subsurface drainage.  This will help filter water off of the fairway and into the nearby creek quickly, which will improve turf conditions and playability.

Sod cut from drainage lines 

Trenching the drain lines 

The trencher we have is very efficient in that it dispels all of the soil directly into a cart, saving man hours.

Trencher emptying soil into cart

We used 4" perforated solid wall pipe.  This will allow the excess water to flow through the sand filled drain lines and into the perforations on the pipe and eventually into the creek where it belongs.  As you can see in the picture we also added several drain basins in low lying areas to prevent puddling.  These basins can also serve as an access point if the pipe ever gets clogged with soil or debris.

Drainage and mix all filled in.   

Sodding the drain lines 

All the sodding is done!  All that is left now is to roll and topdress the sod several times until it is smooth enough to cut.

Finished product 

Compost

This week compost was spread on the fairway surrounds using our Dakota material hauler.  This was done to help hasten spring green up, in hopes that some of the thinned out areas in the rough would fill in.  Compost has countless benefits, such as, improving soil structure, addition of nutrients, beneficial microbes, increase in organic matter, and many other benefits.

Truckload of Compost

Filling up the material hauler for the first spread 

Finished product up close