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