Moving on

This week will be my last week at Barrington. I've accepted a superintendent job at the Philadelphia Cricket Club and will be starting there on Monday. I've been at Barrington for almost six years and it's hard to believe I only have two more days here. My time here has been a great learning experience. I have learned a lot from Mark and everyone I've worked with on the grounds crew. I've also enjoyed working with everyone in the clubhouse and at the racquet club. Of course, I've had the pleasure of getting to know so many of you and I can't thank the members enough for how kind you've been to me. I'll miss Barrington but, it is time to take the next step in my career. Mark has given me more responsibility than I could have imagined when I first started here and I'll be a better superintendent because of that. However, Mark can only give me so much responsibility before it's time to take on more at a different course. It's going to be an adjustment for me and my wife but we are excited for what is ahead of us. This is a great place to work and that is because of the membership and I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to be here for a few years. Thanks for everything and I hope everyone has a great summer.

Ian

Gearing up for spring

It looks like we'll be getting pretty warm over the next ten days so we're working on finishing up winter projects so that once we can get on the course, we'll be ready to go. One project we're wrapping up is the re-finishing of the benches on the course. We brought all the benches in, took the boards out and ran them through a planer. After a final hand sanding, the boards will have some teak oil applied to them and then we'll put the benches back together. The results are impressive. The benches will look as good as new when they are back on the course in a few weeks.

Finish sanding.

The mild winter allowed us to finish the tree work we had planned, which doesn't always happen because the property is usually buried in snow and we can't get around the course. We were even able to do some things in a few areas that we weren't planning on, things like clearing heavy brush left of nine fairway and trimming pine trees up a few feet to make it easier to find golf balls. Normally we aren't able to get this much work done so it's nice to have the time and crew to get these things accomplished. Once the weather warms up we will get right back to working on bunkers and getting the course ready for play. We're already starting the process of hiring a crew and bringing guys back from last year because it looks like it's going to be an early season and we'll need to hit the ground running to get everything finished.

Finally, our second assistant, TJ Roddy, is leaving Barrington. TJ worked here for nearly six years and has been a vital part of our operation, doing everything that was asked of him. He was also very involved in all the golf course projects and even took on most of the responsibility for the maintenance work in the clubhouse after we lost our maintenance man a few years ago. He will be missed and we wish him well.

Ian

Tree work to improve turf health.

One of the main focuses in the winter months is tree removal. Our first priority is always to remove any dead or drying trees that will be dangerous to anyone on the course. The last few winters have been dedicated to this type of removal after the Emerald Ash Borer killed most of our ash trees. This winter we still have a decent amount of dead trees to take out, but we are also starting to eliminate more trees that are causing shade issues and limited air flow on the course. By increasing sun light, especially morning sun, and air flow, we will improve growing conditions for the grass in that area. Spots where we have issues like this result in weaker turf and increased disease pressure. Also, when we have shade issues it increases the time that grass is covered by snow or ice in the spring, resulting in delayed emergence from winter. All of these factors are taken into consideration before removing trees. Now, if it a tree is important to how a hole plays, we are going to leave it alone. However, if there are out of the way trees that can be eliminated without negatively affecting play, we will do that in order to improve the growing climate.

This is an example of what we want to reduce. We don't need to eliminate all the trees, just enough to increase sunlight. In the winter the sun is so low in the sky that this green is rarely in full light.

This picture is taken from the center of #2 green. As you can see the sun light isn't getting through.

Below are a few links for more information about winter sun and tree management from the USGA green section.

Winter Sun

Tree Management

This is likely my last post of 2016. I think it was a pretty good year for us. We had our challenges but overall I think the course improved and will continue to next year. I hope everyone has a happy, safe holiday season and a happy New Year. Oh yea and Go Bucks!

Ian

Bunker work and the OTF conference and show.

We have continued to stay busy working on the bunkers and are now at #15 starting work on the large green side bunker. We've pulled out all the sand and started re-shaping the bunker and splitting it up. A new drain line was installed that we will use to drain the bunkers and the low area between the bunkers. This area has been problematic in the past so we wanted to run a new drain that would work better. We have finished a lot more work this fall than we anticipated so we are in great shape heading into the winter, which seems to be arriving right now. 

#15. The spoils are from the new trench which was cut for the new drain line. 

As you can see the bunker will be smaller and split.

Part of what we do in the winter is attend turf conferences for continuing education in order to keep our applicator's license and hear about the latest research and problems people are having at other courses. Every year we attend the Ohio Turfgrass Foundation conference and show and this year was the 50th. It's one of the largest regional shows in the country and draws people from the surrounding states. We heard a lot of good talks and some of the highlights included; new ways to manage annual bluegrass weevil populations, different approaches to managing soil profiles and better ways to communicate with our crew and membership. We also learned that the USGA green section plans on putting on their website a case study from Barrington talking about our use of African tilapia for algae control. I'll post the link whenever it is available. 

Earnest Byner was the keynote speaker. 

As we get into winter we'll continue to work on bunkers whenever we can and we'll probably start removing dead trees pretty soon. If anyone has any questions about the bunker project please get in touch with us, we'd be happy to talk about it! 

Ian 

Bunker project

The last few weeks of the fall have given  us plenty of great weather. As a result we have been able to get a lot of work done on bunkers. We are basically finished with all our fall prep work on holes 8, 9, 11, 12, 14 and 18. Having so much work done in the fall will help us to hit the ground running once the weather breaks in the spring. If you haven't been out to see the work, number 12 and 14 look a little bit different but, it will make for a big improvement in both play-ability and maintenance.

Bunkers on #14.

#12

#12 right side bunkers.

#12 left side.

With the cold weather settling in we're moving onto our annual winter projects, starting with blowing out the irrigation system tomorrow. After that we'll continue to remove dead or dying trees on the course and any other projects we can get to before the snow shuts down most of the things we can do on the course. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Ian

Topdressing, dryject and bunker work.

If you've been a member at Barrington for more than a year, then you know that in the fall we put out a lot of sand. We've been topdressing fairways for ten years and the play-ability and health continue to improve. By doing this, we are diluting the thatch, improving the soil profile, firming up fairways and helping them to bounce back quicker from heavy rain events. In addition to fairways, we started heavily topdressing spots in the rough a few years ago to help improve those areas as well. As long as the weather is nice, you'll continue to see sand all over the place. We understand this probably is having a negative effect on your round this time of year, but know that the course needs this and will improve because of it.

Soil profile on fairway. We have about 2.5" of sand built up.

Last week we dryjected greens in order to get more sand into the soil profile. Dryject also gets sand deeper into the soil profile than we are able to get with traditional aerifying, which makes it a very nice compliment to our traditional aerification. By continuing to put sand on greens we are able to maintain firm and dry playing conditions throughout the summer while keeping the playing surface healthy.

Dryjecting holes.

The bunker work is off to a great start this fall. The weather has been great and we've been able to get rolling on quite a few holes already. We have started cleaning out bunkers on 8,9,11,12,14 and 18 which includes cleaning the sand out, pulling out the old drainage and putting in new drains. There are a few holes that require some extensive grade work as well. Those areas will have the banks sodded this fall so they're ready to go in the spring. I've included some pictures below, but as always if you want more information, please get in touch with us or just come on out and take a look.

#8

#12 left side.

#12 right side. Now two bunkers

#14 left side. There is a lot of grade work here.

Enjoy the nice weather today and cheer the Indians on tonight in game 7!

Ian

Grass Carp and skunk damage.

In a continued effort to keep our ponds clean while minimizing the chemical inputs, we added some grass carp, also called white amurs, to our ponds. We have some grass carp in a few of the ponds on the course and we noticed that the ponds with the carp and tilapia were the cleanest this summer. With this in mind, we restocked all the ponds with carp so that next year we can have even better success with our pond management. Grass carp can live 12-16 years and feed on many different aquatic weeds. The reason why they work well with the tilapia we have in the ponds is because they clear out the weeds that the tilapia struggle to swim through, making it easier for the tilapia to get the the algae they love. This is our first year of using fish for aquatic weed control so we are really just getting a hang of it. We learned a lot this year and while we struggled a bit early keeping the ponds clean, we have a good idea of what we want to do new year and think the ponds will continue to improve and save us a bit of money at the same time.

White Amur for aquatic weed control.

Grass carp hanging out in the sun.

The other thing you may have noticed are some areas in the rough that are a torn up. This is from our nocturnal friends, skunks and raccoons, digging for grubs to eat. Any of the areas that we treat with insecticides are not torn up because there aren't any grubs to eat. We will generally let these areas go unless they are close enough to the course to affect play. To solve this problem we simply kill the grubs and the skunks and raccoons have no reason to tear the grass up and any areas that are torn up will be raked level and fill back in quickly.

Who's that digging in my yard?

Torn up spot by pond.



















Ian