This morning we experienced our first full frost of the season as the temperatures at the course dipped to 25 degrees. It was quite a shock to the system since we were at 79 degrees at the end of last week. As this will not be our last frost, and in turn frost delay, this year I wanted to try and pass along some information about why we need to keep foot traffic, cart traffic, and maintenance equipment off of frosted grass in order to keep it alive and healthy.
Again the United States Golf Association can explain better than I can what happens to grass when it is under the grips of cold weather and frost.
We all hate to have our round delayed but we have worked too hard to get our golf course back in shape this year to allow anything to risk damaging it now. So please be patient as we allow the frost to burn off and realize that we are doing it for the betterment of the golf course, not to keep you from your round.
Good Lord willing you will not see any heavy equipment tearing up the golf course this winter like last year with The Renovation of #3 Green and Installation of Drainage in #10 Fairway. We will be continuing to make improvement to the golf course however with smaller projects. Projects for this winter will include limbing up of trees to provide clearer shots for you the golfer and more sunlight for the turf. We will also be installing more cross tie curbing along the cart paths in needed areas and will be renovating the main sign at the front entrance. Lots of work but all intended to make your course better.
As I said before we are going to make every decision this winter with the health and survival of the turfgrass in mind. So we may not be mowing the greens first thing in the morning or changing cups right before play goes out or other practices that are routinely done before play during the summer. These practices will be done later in the day when we are positive that the greens surface and the surrounds are free of frost and are not frozen.
We will be foregoing our normal painting of the greens this year in an effort to eliminate any foreign substances covering the leaf blades and blocking any issues that we need to be seeing during the dormant season that might be harming the greens. Hopefully there will be enough distinction between the putting surface and the greens surrounds and if needed we will apply a dose of our normal green dye that we use when applying our routine foliar fertilizer and plant protectants.
I can also tell you to expect a greater probability of the greens being covered this winter compared to past years. In the past I have pushed the envelope on whether or not to cover the greens during questionably and potentially damaging weather to try and keep the golf course open for play. However I realize that I may have been putting the health of the turfgrass at a greater risk than what the reward was worth. Like all other decisions, when and if we cover will be done with the greens health and survivability in mind.
As you can tell from the tone of this post there is a different mindset at Harrison Bay going forward. We have recovered from a trying and hard summer and our course is in the best condition that it has been in many, many years. We will do what ever it takes to keep it that way and we hope you understand and agree with our decisions.
It wasn't too many years ago when golf courses were expected to be "green" year round and so courses in the south spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours overseeding the golf course to satisfy the demands of the golfer. It is great to see that our industry has, for the most part, gone away from this practice and has found other, better ways to keep our courses looking good in the winter months without the drain on budgets and the environment. For many of us we have replaced the overseeding of greens, tees, and fairways with "liquid overseed", otherwise known as paint or pigments.
Just like everything else in the golf course industry, there are as many different ways to paint the greens and as many different products out there as there are superintendents. We have tried many different colorant products and many different ways to get the job done but we like our little ProLawn walk behind sprayer the best. It only takes about 10-12 minutes to do an average size green and we think the final product looks very nice.
This year we are using a new product from Harrell's called Dormant Green. In the years past we have used a different product which was a lighter green and thus we had to add a black paint with it to get the dark green color we desired. The Dormant Green is already tinted to the dark green color we want so mixing is very convenient. The picture to the right shows the different stages of painting. On the far left is the green prior to painting. The short pass in the middle of the picture is a single pass where I began to run out of product in the tank and the far right shows the final product, that being two applications up and back on the same line. Going up and back on the same line helps to eliminate any streaks or skips that might be made during the application process and gives a more uniform finished look.
Painting the greens instead of overseeding them allows us to eliminate the cost of the seed, fertilizer, mowing, and water, as well as eliminates the competition between the primary turfgrass on our greens and the overseed during spring transition. Many benefits come from using a "liquid overseed" and we will enjoy them all. Hope you do as well.
It's that time of year again to paint the greens for the winter months when our Champion ultradwarf bermudagrass greens go dormant and loose their green color. The paint serves several purposes including providing our golfers a target, absorbing heat to increase the surface temperature of the green compared to an unpainted green and help to give us a jump start to the spring by helping the greens come out of dormancy earlier.
Above is our 18th hole before it is painted. To the right Willie Hamby is applying the first or base coat of paint to the green.
Finishing up the first coat. We have used many different products over the nine years we have been painting our greens but have had our greatest success with our current mixture of Green Lawnger and AquaStripe Black.
Applying the second coat of paint to 18 green. We apply the product in two directions and do two clean up laps which gives us a defined appearance and keeps the paint from going outside of the greens surface.
#18 green completed.
#18 green from the fairway following paint application.
I had the pleasure just the other day to speak with Mr. John Reitman of TurfNet.com about the process and advantages of painting greens instead of overseeding them. Below is a link to his article on TurfNet.com.
Using turfgrass colorants instead of overseeding greens is a great way to eliminate the costs associated with seed, fertilizer, fungicides, and daily mowing. It is what I call "instant green".
I am really lucky to have some great employees on my staff who take a high level of pride in the golf course. I have to give credit to Willie Hamby who is in charge of painting the greens and does a great job at it.
Willie Hamby and Mitch Sivley recently finished painting the greens on the golf course. It is fairly late in the year for us to do this project but we tried a different approach and product this year that simply didn't give us the same results that we are accustomed to with the paint so we went back to using the paint.
So why do we paint our greens compared to overseeding or leaving them "dormant brown"?
Well, applying a paint to the greens surface has many advantages both for the golfer and for the turfgrass plant. For the golfer, the paint provides a more visually appealing area on the golf course and helps to identify the putting green area against all of the dormant winter turfgrass landscape. The agronomic benefits include increased surface temperature resulting in reduced frost accumulation and earlier spring green up. Painting the greens also eliminates the issues involved with overseeding of the greens...the disruption to the green surface during seeding and establishment, the competition between the overseeded turfgrass and the desired putting surface and not to mention the cost of the seed, fungicides, fertilizer, and manpower needed to produce an acceptable winter putting surface.
#8 Green before painting
Willie Hamby painting the green. There are many different ways to paint greens. We use our 300 gallon fairway sprayer and spray the paint on by hand. I like this way because it gives us more control over the application and we can spray right up to the edge of the green without having to worry about overlaps or skips. It took a total of 12 manhours for Willie to apply the paint to the greens using 50 gallons of Green Lawnger green paint and 12.5 gallons of AquaStripe Black paint. We use the black paint to darken the paint to help it absorb and retain more heat than simply using the green plus the darker color looks better.
In order not to ruin our existing putting green cups with paint as the green is painted we place an old putting green cup into the top of the cup.
Green after painting. The entire green took 19 minutes to paint and the color will last until spring when the grass begins to grow and we start mowing the greens again.
