2014 Mowing Season is Done

As another mowing season comes to a close at Harrison Bay we have to look back to what all has been accomplished this year and look forward to the enhancements and improvements scheduled for the winter months ahead.  Your agronomy staff has been working hard this year to bring you the best playing conditions possible so if you see them out on the course, let them know you appreciate your efforts.

Last winter brought us some unexpected and unneeded very cold temperatures and snow cover.  Extended cold temperatures and shade are not the best friend to 419 bermudagrass which we have on our fairways and roughs.  As a result we had close to 3 acres of turf which had to be replaced or resodded. These areas have come in nicely and are ready for this winter to come.  If you have noticed we learned from last winter and have raised our height of cut on the fairways a bit more than normal and have moved some of the fairway cuts in on a couple of holes.

One of the biggest improvements we made to the course over the past year was the installation of new irrigation heads around many of the greens.  These heads have allowed us to only water the greens surface instead of using full circle technology which watered the green and the surrounds.  This has cut our watering time and has reduced the amount of water we use to water our greens by over 1 million gallons of water this year alone.  We have 6 more holes to go and this project will be in the books.  I bet Willie and Jonathan will be happy about that.

One change we made to the course this year (some liked it and some did not) was to change the way we mow the fairways and tees.  Instead of striping the fairways which we have done for several years we decided to mow the fairways and tees in the "classic cut" manor which means we mow up and back on one side of the area.  This was a drastic change but the final result was exactly what we wanted.  Not only did it give us a different and unique look, it saved us a considerable amount of time and fuel.  This season, by making this one simple change, we eliminated over 312 man hours spent on mowing fairways.  This reduction in mowing saved over 811 gallons of diesel fuel and eliminated the creation of over 18,000 pounds of carbon emissions.

In an effort to correct the many years of neglect and soft handedness we have given to our greens, this summer we got really aggressive with our aerification and verticutting of the greens.  There was a great deal of debate and concern over the process but in the end it turned out to be one of the best things we have done for our greens in quite a long time and as many of you have been telling us, they are the best they have been in many years.  Sometimes you have to break several eggs to make a really good omelet.

To repair some of the areas on the greens which were damaged from the winter we had to use our nursery, which is what it was made for.  After we used what we needed we went back and sprigged it and grew it in.  It was a good bit of work but having a source of sod on site and having the area double as a short game practice area is the perfect solution.

This year in an effort to help the pollinator population on the golf course we created two areas designated to the growing and cultivation of native wildflowers.  Working with Syngenta through their Operation Pollinator project we selected two areas, one beside #1 tee complex and one between #10 green and #11 tee complex, to create these areas.  The project has been a great success and we see these areas teaming with bees and butterflies.  We will continue to improve our planting processes over the winter to hopefully have these areas even more plentiful with wildflowers and pollinators.

As we look ahead to next season we have many improvements in mind.  We will be adding the DryJect process to our aerification in August. We hope using this process will provide better subsurface drainage and root growth and will reduce the disruption to the putting surface so we can get the greens back to their desired quality sooner.  This winter we will finish our greens irrigation renovation, add surface drainage to #10 fairway, selectively reduce shade around the course, renovate the native planting bed between #1 tee and the driving range, and renovate the remaining fairway bunkers.

It is going to be a long winter and a lot of hard work.  We will do our best to not interfere with your round but please remember that all the work we are doing is simply to make your course better.

June has been a busy month

A lot of work has taken place at Harrison Bay since my last post.  The golf course maintenance staff has been hard at work and with summer temperatures finally arriving the turfgrass has taken off and the course is looking better and better by the day.

The greens have completely recovered from our June aerification and we are back to our normal maintenance practices such as double cutting, rolling, topdressing, vertical mowing, and venting.  These processes are tedious and sometimes inconvenient but they are a necessity to continue to maintain high quality putting surfaces.  Please bear with us as we do these practices, especially if you are one of the first groups out.  We are working as fast as we can to get it done right for all our guests.

One of the projects that we took care of while we were closed for aerification was to repair the winter injury areas in 10 and 15 fairways.  The damaged sod was cut up with a sod cutter and removed from the damaged area.

We then used large rolls of sod from Mid Tenn Turf in Manchester, TN to repair the areas.  It was a lot of work and of course it rained on us right in the middle of the process which made it that much more difficult but the staff stayed with it and got the work done.  These areas have been rolled several times and have been topdressed and fertilized and are ready for play.  We will continue to lower the height of cut down over the next month until it is back to fairway height.

One of the things we are doing different this year is our mowing pattern on our tees and fairways and we get a lot of questions about this.  Mowing the fairways and tees in this pattern is known by many superintendents as the "classic cut" as it takes us back to the day before the modern lightweight fairway units that made striping fairways so easy.  This mowing pattern was chosen because it reduced the time it takes to mow the fairways, the fuel used, and the emissions created.

Some people like the look and some don't.  I guess it is a personal preference but we are doing it to save time and money.  We estimate that by mowing our fairways in this pattern we will save 312 manhours, 811 gallons of diesel fuel, and eliminate the production of 18,641 pounds of point source CO2.  Along with the sharp look that this mowing pattern provides these saving are the icing on the cake.

As the work is never done on a golf course we have several more projects that we will be carrying out during the month of July to continue to improve the course.  We will be aerifying and topdressing the tees this month, we will put the finishing touches on the greens plugging project that Willie and Jonathen have done such a great job on, and we will continue to repair areas in fairways and around greens damaged by the cold winter of 2014.

As the summer progresses please take time to enjoy all of the aspects of the golf course and not just the green grass.  We have an abundance of wildlife to enjoy watching and the Operation Pollinator plantings on holes #1 and #10 are beginning to bloom.  As the seasons progress and these areas mature we should have a great stand of wildflower color in these areas which will provide food and shelter for many bees and butterflies.

Operation Pollinator Wildflower Plots Established

Another environmental project that we are happy to be involved with at The Bear Trace at Harrison Bay is the Operation Pollinator program supported by Syngenta.  For many years golf courses have been accused, sometimes correctly but many times incorrectly, of damaging or destroying the habitats of natural pollinators such as bees and butterflies.  In an effort to raise the awareness of the need and importance of these pollinators to golf courses, and the world in general, Syngenta began Operation Pollinator in Europe several years ago.  With the overwhelming success of the program in Europe they have begun the program in the US.


We chose two areas on our golf courses, which have already been converted from daily high maintenance to low maintenance naturalized areas, to be used for this project.  These areas are to the left of the first tee complex and between the tenth green and eleven tee complex and will encompass about 15,000 square feet.

The process of preparing the area between 10 and 11 began with mowing down of the naturalized area with our frontdeck mower.

The next step was to blow off the clippings.

The area was then mowed down with a triplex mower down to 1/4" and blown off again.

After mowing the area down we allowed the area to "green" up and then applied RoundUp to the entire area.  After a few days we used our John Deere aerifier to prep the ground pulling 3/4" cores from the ground.  The area was then coated with a layer of sand and drug with a steel drag mat to prepare the soil for planting.

We used 1/2" rebar and flat washers to build rope stakes that we placed around the planting areas.  Hopefully this will let the golfers know that they are not supposed to drive in these areas (but time will tell).

We purchased our wildflower mix from American Meadows and hope that the mix will provide us with many years of native pollinator wildflowers and will most of all provide the native pollinators the food, habitat, and breeding ground that they need to survive and regain their population.

I think this is a great program, and I like the fact that Syngenta is supporting this project without making any money off of it.  I would especially like to thank our Syngenta rep, Jason Whitecliffe, for introducing us to this project and for his support in getting it off the ground.

If you would like information about the project, contact your local Syngenta sales rep or visit http://operationpollinator.com/golf/.