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

Aerification

We've received a few questions in the last few weeks about aerification timing, so I thought I'd give an update and a few links that explain our thinking when it comes to aerification. As far as an update to our aerification, we only have the back nine fairways left to finish and will be able to get those done at some point in October. This isn't ideal timing for us (we wanted to finish this week but were rained out) but it's also not the end of the world either. Below are a few links from the USGA that cover the reasons for and preferred timing of aerification.

Why do we always aerate when the greens are perfect?

Why do golf courses aerate so much?

Easing the pain of core aeration.

Core cultivation: Timing is everything.

I hope those links are helpful. As usual we are happy to answer any questions you may have so please, feel free to comment on this post, email or call us!

Ian

Aerification update, weevil control and seeding short rough.

As most of you know by now, we aerified greens and tees the week after labor day. Ideally, we would have also completed fairway aerification but, we were unable to because it rained every day that week. The greens are healing in very nicely and should be back to normal shortly. We've mowed them a few times since aerifying and are starting to lower the height of cut back to what we normally maintain them at. The reason we raise the height of cut after aerifying is to keep the mowers from picking up too much sand, which damages the mowers.  We will try again to aerify fairways next Tuesday and Wednesday. Hopefully the weather co-operates and we can complete them because they badly need to be aerified.

Sept 15.

Sept 20.




















Something we've been waiting to do is a late season application to control the annual bluegrass weevils that are in our fairways. With this application we want to reduce the number of adults overwintering on the course which will in turn reduce the adults we have reproducing in the spring. The weevils have been munching away on the bluegrass in the fairways for a few weeks now but, we've been keeping an eye on them to make sure it didn't get out of hand. The reason why we let them go is because they're killing annual bluegrass, which we're trying to reduce anyway. Spraying weevils doesn't require covering the entire fairway. A majority of weevils are in the first few feet off of the short rough, so we sprayed one lap around each fairway and were able to get a majority of the weevils without using much product at all. Hopefully, we'll see a reduced population next year.


Deceased weevils (the small white things).



















Finally, we started seeding into some areas on the course to re-establish stands of grass that suffered this summer. We began in the short rough, on bunker banks and in the rough around greens. Getting seed started right now in these thin areas will reduce weed invasion and improve the stand for next year, resulting in healthier grass and greater play-ability. We'll continue to do this all fall in order to rebuild our stands of turf.

Seeded short rough. Looks ugly, but it will be better for this.

Ian

Moss and poa death.

In anticipation of aerifying greens this week, we started spraying the moss on greens in order to limit its spread across the putting surfaces. Moss has proven itself to be one of our bigger management problems. We had been beating it back slowly and consistently by spraying in the spring and fall over the past year but, once we had the two weeks of rain in early August it came back strong. The problem with trying to spray for moss during the summer is that the product we use can be hard on greens that are stressed from the heat. So the moss that survived the spring was able to thrive once it had the proper conditions earlier last month. In reaction to this, we started our moss control program a few weeks early this year. Doing this will give us more time to control the population before the end of the year and will limit the mechanical spread of moss during aerification. You'll notice that the moss on greens has turned brown and will stay that way as we continue our control efforts.

Of Moss and Men from USGA

As I've discussed earlier on this blog, we've been working to reduce the amount of annual bluegrass in the fairways this year. We've been pretty successful so far and actually received a bit of help from the rain. The fairway spots that laid wet for a few days after all the recent rain actually killed off all the annual bluegrass and left behind the bent. Now, these spots do look terrible, but if you look at what's left it is all bentgrass which, after we aerify, top-dress and seed into these areas, should fill in leave us with a nice stand of bent. It's not the ideal way to transition from annual bluegrass to bent but we'll make it work.

Thin spot with only bentgrass remaining.

This week is our aerification week. It looks like we should be able to get greens done and hopefully a few fairways. Ideally, we'd get all the greens and fairways done, but it looks like we'll be getting some rain at the end of the week which would keep us from finishing. If unable to finish aerifying fairways, we'll have to finish them whenever possible later in the fall. It's not ideal but we've done it before. I hope you all enjoy your labor day weekend and we'll see you when we re-open later this week.

Ian

Heavy rains, sodden fairways and drains.

After not having rain for months we received 5.5" of rain in one week which, on its own is bad, but when you couple that with extremely high humidity, clouds and no wind you have a recipe for a very wet course because it never has a chance to dry out. Because of this we fell behind on mowing fairways and rough last week, but caught up as of today. You may notice yellowing of fairways in some spots that have had standing water for a few days. Grass, like any living organism, needs to breathe, and if it is sitting under water it is unable to do that. Furthermore, the warmer the water and the more intense the light, the quicker the turf decline. So between the heavy rain, high humidity and high temps, we've had a perfect environment for fairway turf decline. Once we dry out, which it looks like we should early next week, we'll determine the areas with the most decline and start slit seeding into the soil to begin healing. The good news is, we're entering the best time of year to seed so these areas should heal quickly.

Flooding of turf from MSU

Wet, yellowing turf.

Staying with the theme of water, we've also been working on installing more large storm drains to keep water from getting to the course. We installed large catch basins at the property lines on #11 and #2 to catch water as its coming onto the course. In the past when it has rained enough, large quantities of water would overwhelm the old drains and pour onto the fairways. By re-grading these areas and putting in larger drains, we should be able to get all of that water into the drain lines before it runs down the middle of our fairways.

New drain and grading at #11.

New drain and grading at #2. In this, and the drain on #11, the grading will act as a backstop to catch any overflow until the drain can catch up.

Enjoy the Wine Classic this weekend!
Ian

Venting greens, Ground Shieldz and pump house problems.

The last two Mondays at Barrington were very productive for us because the course was closed. One thing we like to do when we have an opportunity like this is to vent the greens using the PlanetAir. As I've touched on before, venting the greens increases air exchange and water flow, resulting in a happier plant. This is a very non-invasive procedure that is very beneficial to the greens,while barely disrupting play; in fact, it actually increases green speed.

Slits for breathing and drinking. 

In case you were wondering, the white boards, called Ground Shieldz, at the practice green and driving range tee were a turf protection product we were trying out. These boards are used to protect playing surfaces when stadiums are hosing concerts or anything else that may damage turf. The idea for us was to let the boards sit in one spot for six days and see how the turf underneath looked after. The turf looked longer because we couldn't mow it but, besides that it looked great. We were impressed with how well the grass did underneath and will likely be getting some to use here for the many events that happen around the putting green. 

Boards. 

Grass after six days of cover. 

Finally, we had some issues at our pump house over the weekend which meant we went all weekend without watering at night. Evening watering is the best time to ensure that the plant takes up and efficiently utilizes as much water as possible, so when we miss nights that we want to water it's not ideal. We have the issue sorted out now, but we had a few less than fun days of watering this weekend. We fell behind in some spots on water but we'll catch up soon. I don't know what the opposite of the saying "when it rains it pours" is, but that's what we dealt with this weekend. 

Ian 

Hot weather and disease control.

The heat and humidity that we've been dealing with for the past few weeks has meant that we have very high disease pressure to deal with. Turf diseases need three things; host, environment and a pathogen present. We always have the host and the pathogens present, disease pathogens lay inactive in the soil or thatch waiting for optimal conditions to grow. What we try to control (usually in vain, because it's mother nature) is the environment. The biggest thing we do (there are other things like topdressing and aerification) is limit the amount of water we put on the course because diseases need moisture to thrive, so we do our best to eliminate it. However, when it is as hot and humid as it's been recently, it is difficult to eliminate moisture. While we haven't received a lot of rain, what we have had is very heavy dew in the morning that doesn't burn off until around noon most days. This is a long time for the plant to be wet, allowing pathogens plenty of opportunity to grow. When we mow or drag we eliminate the dew and shorten the time that the plant is wet. However, with the exception of greens, we don't mow everyday, so we're not always removing dew. This is where fungicides come in to play.

In addition to reducing disease pressure as much as we can, we also have some very nice fungicides that help us control all of the diseases that we deal with throughout the year. We stay on a regular spray schedule to keep the course disease free and it really is paying off. Preventive spraying is not only far more effective, it is also far less expensive because spray rates are lower for preventive applications. So far, we've stayed pretty clean on the greens, tees and fairways but, if you look in the rough you'll see some untreated spots where dollar spot is thriving. 

Extremely impressive dollar spot mycelium. Imagine if we didn't treat the course at all! 

Soon enough this disease pressure will back off. In the mean time we'll continue doing our best to keep the course clean.

Ian

Hot weather and poa control.

The last few days have been hot and humid and it looks like after the weekend cool down we'll be back to more of the same. While this weather is miserable to work in, it actually doesn't require us to water too much. We haven't run the irrigation overnight since Sunday and we are catching up in some of the areas where we've dried out the last few weeks. The wetting agent we've sprayed is helping a lot and we have two new guys (both named Mike and both with a lot of experience on golf courses) that have been doing a great job hand watering hot spots. Hand watering may sound pretty simple, but it's nice to have experienced guys doing it because grass turns brown for a lot of reasons, and if the guy watering doesn't know why it's chlorotic he may actually do more harm than good. One example is if grass is yellow or brown because it has disease (anthracnose is a disease that can like wilt) you do not want to water it because you'll just make the problem worse.

Another reason why some grass brown is because of the growth regulator we sprayed on fairways to reduce the amount of annual bluegrass (poa) in our fairways. The damage done to the poa won't kill it, simply stunt the growth to the point where the bentgrass can out compete it. As the poa adjusts the the growth regulator it will return to its normal color but not its normal growth habits. The bentgrass is already growing over the top of the poa because of this stunted growth; it's pretty exciting to see and will result in much better fairways.

Chlorotic poa as a result of paclobutrazol application.

Bentgrass (the lighter green, healthy grass) winning.

Ian

Dry weather, functional wells and a new nursery.

These last few weeks have been pretty dry and it looks like this has lead to great playing conditions for the course. We have been doing our best to keep the course as dry as possible while also keeping it green with some new approaches this year. First, instead of watering a little bit every night we are watering at one hundred percent and then taking a night or two off. This seems to be cutting down on the wet areas in the rough we were dealing with last year when we went through dry spells. Secondly, we've been using wetting agents more this year. We sprayed greens a few weeks ago and have seen great results; they're holding up to the heat a lot better and don't require as much water to get them to bounce back if they do wilt. We've also been using a new moisture meter that tells us exactly how much moisture is in the ground at that time. Where this is really effective is when the grass is green and not wilting yet but, may be close. If we check the areas that normally wilt and the moisture is starting to get into the low range (in our case around 20%) we will hand water but, if it's higher than that we can let it go. This allows us to keep things drier and more consistent.

Moisture meter.

The wells at the range have been fixed and running for a few weeks. The water is being pumped into the new pond left of number nine and when it goes into the overflow it dumps into the irrigation pond. We are actually getting a lot more water than we anticipated, which was a pleasant surprise. What's interesting is how the color of the water changed once we turned the wells on. I'm not sure if you've noticed but the water is a really light bluish green. Whatever color it is, I'm just glad to have the wells working to keep our irrigation pond full.

In working on all the golf course projects the last few years we used up all the sod at our nursery and it was time to start again. A few weeks ago we cleaned it up, added sand and seeded it. Some of the seed is starting to pop and it should be a fuzzy green area in a week or two. This seed won't be ready to be used as sod for a while but, it will be nice to again have a nursery from which we can pull sod when necessary. We currently have green height sod available there so, this new area will be kept at fairway height.

Seedlings coming in.

Happy 4th of July!

Ian

Adding sand to bunkers, fixing wells and Men's Invitational.

As part of the effort to keep bunkers playing consistently, we topped some of them off with sand. Between the wind blowing it out, the rain washing it away and rakes and shots taking it out, bunkers lose sand all year long. Usually, it's the same bunkers every year that need sand added, but we always check and add where necessary. This is a quick and easy way to improve consistency and appearance. Below is a picture of about how much sand we add to bunkers in need.

We are in the process of fixing the wells we have at the driving range. These wells need attention from time to time in order to keep them working. As you know, we cleared out the pond left of number 9 in order to have some extra irrigation water in case of a drought. The wells at the range actually feed that pond and would keep it full of water in case we ever had to transfer that water to the irrigation pond. In short, it's important that these wells work. We brought a well company in to work on them and they are in process. Once they are repaired we'll be well prepared for the upcoming heat of the summer.

Well pipe at range.

Finally, I hope everyone enjoyed the men's invitational this weekend. We did our best to get the course in great shape and it was playing firm and fast until the rain came Thursday night. Hopefully this didn't take away from the weekend! Congratulations to everyone who won and I hope that you all had fun.

Oh, and I hope you enjoyed the Cav's win. This is how we should start every summer.

Ian

Rain and firming up new bunkers.

We had some heavy rain this week, which we needed after a few very dry weeks at the end of May. We also wanted some heavy rain to see how the new bunkers would hold up and they did very well. As we complete more bunkers on the course there is less and less repair to do after heavy rains. Bunkers used to look like the ones below.

The pictures above are from June 23, 2015. I'm not sure how much rain fell on that day but, this was often the scene after a heavy rain. The picture below is from this Wednesday after we received about .7" of rain. I don't have a picture of #7 but it looks the same. The new bunkers are obviously working well.

The heavy also helped to firm up the bunkers enough to the point where we were able to get a power tamper in the new bunkers to firm them up so that they play like the rest of them. The difference is dramatic and they should help the course play more consistently.

We're going to keep plugging away at the course and try to get it in great shape for the Bear next week!

Ian

Annual bluegrass.

The grass we want to grow on greens, tees and fairways is creeping bentgrass. We have a very nice stand of bent on all of our playing surfaces. However, annual bluegrass (poa annua) has crept its way into all of the stands of grass that we manage. Last year we started a spray program on fairways which will reduce, but not eliminate, the amount of poa in our fairways. There are a few reasons we want to reduce poa in fairways; it is a weaker grass that doesn't withstand stress very well, be it from heat, drought or wear, it reduces consistency of the playing surface due to seed head formation in the spring and it has some pretty serious disease and pest pressure issues.
In the early spring we spray a growth regulator called Embark to reduce seed head formation and to help the health of the plant. This may seem counter intuitive, after all why would we want to help the plant that we are trying to get rid of? Well, we like our jobs and if we didn't do this the course would look and play very badly. Also, grass that goes to seed puts all its energy into that process and is in turn a much weaker plant heading into the summer, which is a recipe for dying grass (again, we like working at Barrington). As we move into the summer months we are switching to a different growth regulator called paclobutrazol which has a stronger effect on the poa than the bentgrass. This will allow the bentgrass to out compete and in turn crowd out the poa.
Last year when we sprayed there was a slight yellowing on the fairways as a result of the paclobutrazol (Discussed here). This is normal and we expect to see a bit this year and in order to minimize that we started at a very low rate and timed the application to coincide with our fairway fertilization. Ideally, you'll never notice. Now, this yellowing eventually goes away as the plants become accustomed to the growth regulator and soon return to their normal color. As this happens, the bentgrass will continue to increase in fairways and so too will consistency, both in appearance and play-ability.
Now, one of the biggest reasons we want to reduce poa is because of the pests that go after it. One of them is a disease called anthracnose which will kill poa very quickly and has the best name of all the turf diseases. However, what I want to talk about today are annual bluegrass weevils. I've mentioned how the weevils are a new arrival to the area in previous posts and this year we have some damage in fairways and tees. Through the use of paclobutrazol we will reduce the amount of poa available we also reduce the potential damage that can be inflicted on our course. We do have some good products to control the weevils, but if we can pair that with a reduction in their food source, it will make those products that much more effective.

Weevil damage.

Weevil larvae. This is what we want to eliminate because they are the ones that actually kill the plant. The adults lay eggs in the leaves of the plant and then larvae then eat their way down the plant, through the crown, and into the thatch layer. The products we spray are ingested when the larvae eats the plant.

Ian

Buttoning up projects

The last few weeks have been busy ones as we finish up all of our projects before Memorial Day weekend. The bunkers are all finished and look really good. They are still a little fluffy but once we get a few good rains on them they'll firm up and play just like the other ones do. We finished work at the range and the new driving range mats were installed too (we had nothing to do with this, but it's worth mentioning). The mats will really help to reduce the beating the range tee takes from outings. With this warm weather the course is really greening up, leaves are filling in the trees and we're starting to look like a golf course. The focus moving forward will be getting all the detail work done and transitioning into maintenance mode. It's looking like it will be a great Memorial Day weekend!

New plantings at driving range.

Artificial tees.



















Ian