North aeration complete, still incredibly dry

 

Last week the forecast had over an inch of rain forecasted to fall in the afternoons on multiple days this week. The storms were out there but none of them hit our property. It was rained TWICE in the past 30 days. We have hit 100 degrees every day in July so far and the wind has been blowing all afternoon. 

Someone north of us is getting rain but it is not helping our cause.  We are moving close to 900,000 gallons of irrigation water a night in order to keep our turf hydrated. The low humidity and wind means we are wet in the morning and dry in the afternoons. We are watering during the day when possible and we are keeping the bentgrass greens moist as we get through this crazy dry period. We are hoping for at least some clouds over the weekend to catch up a bit!

It is not just hot for the turf, it is hot for the staff as well. This week they did an amazing job of getting the North course aerated for the season. The high sun, the sand, and hot machines all made for a grueling week.

We got moving first thing Monday morning with a fresh verticut on the Champion greens.

Even with the blades clicked down more than normal for aeration the amount of debris being pulled up is minimal. Keeping these greens lean has helped thin out the leaf blades and reduce grain this season and it will only continue to improve.

Next up the Dryject machines came on site. These machines shoot a bead of water into the upper greens profile and then kiln dried sand follows the path of the water into the green. 30 tons of sand was hand delivered to three different machines on Monday to finish this process.

The dryject gets us a pretty wide column of sand right where we need it in the upper organic layer of the greens. Keeping this area diluted with sand helps encourage root growth, water infiltration, and keeps the surface firm.

Behind the dryject we poked another set of solid tine holes and then backfilled them with more dry sand. Depending on how the healing goes this year we will probably alternate the Dryject process with pulling small cores out each year. By limiting nitrogen inputs but still supplying the plant with all the necessary carbohydrates, amino acids, sugars and proteins it needs to thrive through our spray program, we can maintain or reduce the amount of thatch without having to pull an aggressive core that takes forever to heal.

The greens were brushed in, rolled and then dry cut on Thursday afternoon. We will put another dry cut on them Monday as they start to grow again so expect some sandy putts first thing in the morning this weekend as some humidity finally returns.

Let the healing begin.

The approaches and tees were lightly verticut and then solid tine aerated and top dressed with sand. With the tees and approaches being sand based our focus was just getting some holes in them so water can continue to infiltrate and adding sand to firm up the surface.

The big project was dropping our new tractor mounted verticutters on to the fairways for the first time. These blades were set just below a half inch and they did a tremendous job of tearing out some thatch from these fairways.

This is a pretty sight for a warm season turfgrass manager. Over a few years with annual verticutting and topdressing the amount of thatch goes down and the clean up becomes much easier. This year was certainly a chore.

The calendar adjustment for this year reduced our closed time from two weeks to 4 days. The guys have been hustling all week and thanks to new equipment like the verticutters, topdressers, tractors and blowers we can make this happen.

Over 400 tons of topdressing sand was spread on the North tees, fairways and approaches this week and brushed in. This sand goes a long way in helping produce firm healthy playing surfaces.

The fairways are playable and plenty firm out there. They will fill in quickly over the next week, especially if we get some rain.

Over on the South, James and Connor got our new surface aerator installed out in front of 15 green this week. This required running a wire from the 16 tee side of the stone wall to back behind 16 black tee to the power source. They rented a pneumatic mole to bore under the path and then Ditch Witch was nice enough to come out and demo a vibratory plow and run the wire over to the water.

The new aerator will help keep water moving in the more stagnant area of the lake and is much more effective than the bubblers that were here before.

Drew has put his final edge on the South cartpaths. His last day at Carmel will be Tuesday next week. We are sad to see him go as his attention to detail on the South was outstanding but his girlfriend in the mountains awaits!

The Firefly autonomous fairway mower graced our presence this week as well. This mower is all electric (no engine, no hydraulics) and with the tap of a button on an ipad, will venture out and mow fairways all by itself. Supposedly 3 mowers together would be able to mow all 60 acres of our fairways on both courses in under 5 hours. The labor efficiencies, quality of mow and diesel savings seem to make sense so these mowers will be heavily considered to replace our current fleet of 7, 7 year old mowers. 

And ironically here is the result of a hydraulic line explosion from one of our older mowers this week on 4 tees North.

In other singed turf news we went out with an application of fertilizer and herbicide on the south green surrounds early this week in order to keep pushing the bermuda along and to control any nutsedge, kyllinga and spurge starting to emerge. With the rain missing and temperatures ramping up all week, any zoysia that got sprayed has taken on some tip burn. In this picture you can see the bermuda loving life, nutsedge dying in the bunker face and then the zoysia collar with some burn. There are some impressive areas in the rough where zoysia has invaded that are very easy to pick out like around 1 approach. A little rain and a week of growth will have things looking green again.

Another example of how crazy the weather has been, this is called 4th of July blanket burn. Send some rain our way!