TurfNet Bandon Dunes trip 2012 Day Two

We had the great fortune to play a beautiful golf course in Oregon City, Oregon today.  Stone Creek Golf Club was a pure treat for all of us.  The golf course was in excellent condition and we would like to thank Mike Turley and his staff for welcoming us to play. 

The morning started out with a typical northwest rainfall but quickly moved out and brought a very nice rainbow stretching across the golf course.

Rock outcroppings and man made piles of rocks moved during construction dot the landscape of the golf course but never get in the way of the playability of the course.

Bunkering at Stone Creek was amazing.  The bunkers were large, deep in areas, and a real challenge to get out of, of which I now have lots of experience, but they were in great shape.

Fairways were wide in some areas, like this one on #9 which is a double fairway, but very narrow on other holes but they are well maintained and a pleasure to hit out of.

Having the opportunity to visit Stone Creek was a personal treat to me due to the vast environmental programs and projects that they have undertaken.  The former golf course superintendent, David Phipps, who is now the Northwest Field Representative for GCSAA, has become a good friend and mentor to me over the years with environmental programs at Harrison Bay.  It was great that David could join us today for the round and we had a great time talking about many things including the upcoming Eagle Cam season.

 

On to Bandon Dunes in the morning.

 

 

 

TurfNet Bandon Dunes trip 2012 Day One

The much anticipated TurfNet trip to Bandon Dunes resort began today with a cross country trip from Atlanta to Portland. We started the trip off with a quick nine hole warm up round at Colwood National Golf Club. Nice course but we only got to play eight holes in because it started raining. Black sand in the bunkers was a unique sight compared to our traditional white bunkers in the South.

Melting Down Potassium Nitrate

Once again the time of year has come to start applying Potassium nitrate to our greens. This product is excellent for preparing our greens for the winter and helping them to recover from the summer stress but it is a major pain to mix up and get into solution as anyone who has dealt with it before can attest.  Most people, as we have in the past, mix the product a little at a time in a five gallon bucket and add it to their spray tank hoping they can get it all mixed up before they run out of room in the tank.

 

 

 

Well we wanted to find a better, easier, less time consuming way of getting the product into a solution and into the sprayer.  As the old saying goes, "Necessity is the mother of all invention" and this is what we came up with. 

 

We took a spare 55 gallon drum, rinsed it out, and cut a large hole in the top of the drum.

 

 



I went to our local ACE Hardware and purchased a 1/3 horsepower sump pump to which we connected a one inch hose.

We filled the 55 gallon drum with 40 gallons of water and placed the one inch hose down to the bottom of the drum so that it coiled around the bottom.  The sump pump was placed so it was about half way down in the water.

 

 

With the sump pump running and the water circulating at a nice pace we slowly added the potassium nitrate to the water. 

We placed the 200 pounds of product that we needed to apply to the greens in the drum, filled the water volume up to the 50 gallon mark and let the pump run throughout the night.

 When we came in this morning all of the product was melted down into solution and ready to be added to the sprayer.  We used the pump to transfer the solution to the sprayer in just a manner of minutes which would have taken us close to an hour and a lot of frustration on Willie's part to get all the product melted down and ready to go.  The drum was then filled back up with water and the rest of the sprayer filled up rinsing the tank and the sump pump all in one motion.

Granted this is a "prototype" of the design but it worked great and saved us a ton of time and effort and I feel did a better job of getting the product properly dissolved for application. 

 

 

2012 GCSAA Certification Committee

I just returned from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America headquarters in Lawrence, Kansas where I am again serving on the Certification Committee this year.  It is a great honor and a great amount of responsibility to serve on this committee which will make and recommend decisions on the future of the certification program.

The GCSAA national headquarters is a wonderful building filled with the history of the golf course maintenance industry and a lot of very dedicated, hard working people.  If you are a golf course superintendent you owe it to yourself and your industry to do two things before you retire, 1) volunteer to serve on a national, state or local board and 2) visit the headquarters in Lawrence to see the beginnings and the future of our industry.

This years Certificaiton Committee is chaired again by Mr. Rafael Barajas, CGCS of Hacienda Golf Club in La Habra Heights, CA

 

Other committee members are:

 

Mr. Tim Benedict, CGCS of Woodmere Club, Woodnere, NY

Mr. Bill Bieck, CGCS of Heritage Hills Golf Course, McCook, NE

Mr. Brett Hetland, CGCS of Brooks National Golf Club, Okoboji, IA

Mr. Kenneth Ingram, CGCS Retired of Silver Springs, MD

Mr. Paul McGinnis, CGCS of Eagles Nest Golf Club of Pebble Creek, Peoria, AZ

Mr. Jim Pavonetti, CGCS of Fairview Country Club, Greenwich, CT

Mr. Paul Pritchard, CGCS of Wiltwyck Golf Club, Cottekill, NY

Mr. Stephen Ravenkamp, CGCS Retired of Vain, OK

and Ms. Penny Mitchell, Senoir Manager of Certification for GCSAA, Lawrence, KS

 

 







Lake bank mowing

The Bear Trace at Harrison Bay is located on a beautiful peninsula which extends out into Harrison Bay.  It has eleven holes which touch water and these waters are regulated by the Tennessee Valley Authority which regulates how we can maintain the banks around the lake.  We use buffer strips around the golf course to filter fertilizer and chemical residues as well as restricting possible soil particles from running off into the surface water.

 

 

 

We have several holes which play across the water from the tee and occasionally the vegetation grows high enough as to impede the play of the hole.  This is a big problem for us because TVA restricts our ability to place any equipment near the waters edge or apply any chemicals or growth regulators in these areas.  It is times like this when having friends with the proper tools to do the job comes in handy.

 

 

The Tennessee Department of Transportation, TDOT, has been very helpful this week by bringing one of their reach arm right of way mowers out to the golf course to safely and properly maintain the lake banks without damaging the lake bank or endangering the environment.

 

 

The mower is capable of remaining a safe distance from the waters edge and mowing the vegetation down to an acceptable and safe height.  The work this machine can do in a day would take weeks and weeks for my employees to do by hand.

 

When all is said and done the high vegetation is removed allowing a clearer view of the hole, while protecting the stability and structure of the lake bank and observing the rules and regulations by which we are bound. Many thanks to our friends at TDOT and job well done. 

 

 



Deep Drilling Greens

What do you do when your greens reach the point where they are so contaminated with organic matter and have formed a hard pan layer from years of conventional aerification that roots, air and water cannot penetrate through the soil profile?

Answer...You bring out the big guns.  Today we deep drilled three greens (14, 16, and 17) with 5/8" tines which penetrated the greens to a depth of 10 inches.  This process was masterfully done by Southeastern Turf Maintenance in a matter of just a couple of hours.

The drills are set on a continuous plate which holds 50 drill bits which allows for a quick operation. 

Standard 16" 1/2" soil probe placed in a drill hole.

Depth of soil probe when place in drill hole.

Deep drill tine in comparison to soil probe.

We chose to double drill #16 green since it has given us the most issues this year.  This is half way through the second drilling on the green.

All the material which was brought to the surface from the drilling process was picked up and removed from the green.  The green was then topdressed, allowed to dry for a while, then drug in with a carpet drag and the green was then rolled several times.  The deep drilling will allow for water and oxygen to move throughout the soil profile of these greens which will allow for the roots to thrive and the green to recover completely in a matter of a week or two.  If this works out to the extent we believe it will we will look at doing all the greens next year when we close for mid season aerification.

Environmental Outreach

With all that has been going on at the golf course over the past month posting on the blog has had to take a back seat.  Hopefully things are slowing down, or at least the grass will slow down on its growth, and I can get back to the blog. 

I was very encouraged this past week though that we are making an impact with our environmental activities, both near and far, when I received a comment on the blog about our Mallard Duck Nesting Tubes.  The comment came from Mr. and Mrs. Chris and Heather Miller which stated "My son loved the idea and used it as an Eagle Scout project.  He is 13 years old and just completed them and installed them in the pond around our community in Utah.  Thanks for the detailed instructions."  It is great to see environmental stewardship activities taking place and to know that we had a small part in it.  Great job young Mr. Miller and best of luck to you and your mallard ducks.