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