A Letter To My Colleagues

For those of you that follow this blog and are invested in the turf industry I wanted to share these thoughts.

This has been, without a doubt, a stressful spring for most of you in the industry. A harsh winter, a cold spring, and an impatient customer base are realities we are all facing. Seasons like these make a lot of us ask ourselves “why do we do what we do?” It seems that no matter how talented and capable we are, how many resources we have access to, or how confident we are in our processes, there are factors we cannot and will never be able to control. Regardless of how good our product is, the only guarantee we have is that a percentage of it, at some point, will succumb to elements out of our control.

In regards to the question “why do what we do?” Are we wasting our time, knowledge, and leadership? The answer is NO.  In fact, this thought process is backwards. Managing the effects of seasons like these is exactly what we were hired to do. Our skills, time, energy, and knowledge are of the utmost importance at this time. Ultimately, our leadership is what will determine the success of this recovery process.

Most of us are likely facing crew members, owners, customers, or board members whose spirits are down right now.  It is our leadership that will that will help lift these spirits, keep people motivated and educated, and help them understand that we will get our products back to our exacting standards. We control the culture and attitudes of our workplace so always remember to lead by example in times like these.

In this time of high stress and pressure, it is important to remember a few things. We are all in this together and we need to lean on each other for help. The knowledge of our colleagues is our best and most underutilized tool. Also, we will be spending a lot of extra time at our facilities or with our customers this spring, so remember to take time for yourself, your family, and your friends. These people are your support system so embrace them. Let your leadership and positive attitude follow you home.

As we continue the fight this spring, I ask you all to remain patient, optimistic, honest, and positive because I’m confident things will only get better. We have too much talent in this industry to think otherwise.

Fairway Recovery Status

It has been 16 days since we finished round one of our over seeding process and we are now seeing some germination. The temperature fluctuations have definitely slowed the process down however. The most promising news is that the areas we thought would only recover from seed have shown signs of regeneration from the crown of the plant. If we could get some consistent warmth, I think we will see the recovery process really accelerate.

 



As much as I would love to hold off on additional seeding until we get consistent weather and a real assessment of the success of the initial seeding, we just don't have the time to chance it. Our window to get seed in the ground, germinated, and mature by this summer continues to narrow. Because of this, we have started an additional round of fairway seeding this week, and will continue this until we have hit every fairway again. Fortunately many fairways only need spot seeding, but a few of the most exposed fairways will be completely seeded again. There are even a handful of severely sloped areas around the greens that we will hydro seed. These areas are too steep to run a seeder over them so the hydro mulch will act as artificial soil, providing the needed seed/soil contact and erosion stabilization.

I haven't spent a lot of time discussing greens in any of the posts because they survived pretty well. They are not without a few stressed areas but of the 261,360 square feet of greens we maintain, I  would estimate we only have around 1,000 square feet of visibly stressed bent grass. We need to be careful though, relying solely on a visual assessment of the canopy to judge the health of the turf can get you in trouble. Even the areas that appear healthy are most likely recovering from the stress of the winter. A lot of energy went into surviving this last winter and regenerating this spring. We will take it a little easy on them over the next few weeks as we prepare them for spring aerification.

Overall, I have seen much improvement over the last five days and I expect that to continue. The slow 1/2" of rain yesterday was priceless. We are being pretty aggressive in regards to getting the place back to where we want it. We appreciate your understanding and patience.

On a side note we are putting together plans to allow carts off paths but only into the rough. We hope to have the logistics of policing this figured out by the weekend. Please, please police yourself and those around you so we can continue to keep traffic off the fairways.

Fore The Golfer: Etiquette Towards Course Maintenance Personnel (+playlist)

"State of the Golf Course Report"

I intended on writing this post a week ago but the over seeding process was very time consuming and ate up most of my time.

It is pretty obvious at this point that our fairways have suffered extensive damage this winter. My best guess is that 60%-70% of the ryegrass has succumbed to cold temperature injury and/or desiccation. I still have some hope that we will see a little more green up, but most likely not much. Because of this, we initiated and completed a complete over seeding process this past week. With the help of three contracted seeders and one of our own, we were able to seed all 60 acres of fairways, tees, and collars in two directions in three days. This is, of course, the most important thing we could have done in the recovery process, but the work is far from over.



We are essentially performing a complete grow-in very similar to what we have done during the recent renovations. There are a number of challenges that make this spring grow-in particularly difficult however. The most difficult of which is that we are open for play. Our goal is to impede your golf experience as little as possible and this limits our ability to perform light and frequent watering cycles, as well as limit traffic. These plants will be juveniles for awhile and timely watering will be critical. Fitting these water cycles in on days that we have 300+ golfers will be very difficult. As for traffic stress, we may have cart restrictions at the onset of germination but we fully understand that long standing cart restrictions during the year are not an option. We will probably be forced to allow carts on these fairways before the plant is fully mature.

Disease pressure and the threat of drought stress will be extremely high this summer. A fall grow-in allows the grass to germinate and mature before the disease pressure and heat the of oncoming summer. A spring grow-in however sends a juvenile plant into the stresses of summer. Ryegrass, even when mature, faces the threat of many diseases, but two in particular, pythium and grey leaf spot, are very concerning and expensive to treat. Unfortunately a juvenile plant is significantly more susceptible to these specific diseases. We always have a preventative program in place to fight these diseases but this year our control may start earlier and run longer. In regards to drought stress, it goes without saying that a juvenile plant is less capable of handling it than a mature plant. Spring is time for the plant to put down roots and prepare its carbohydrate reserve for the coming summer. In our case, the plant is throwing it's energy into growing and maturing from a seed. This energy drain produces a plant that has "less in the tank" to fight of the heat of the summer. This may force light and frequent syringing into our daily routine.



 



Slit seeders hard at work.

The million dollar question that I have been repeatedly asked but unable to answer is "how long before we are back to 100%?" I wish I had the answer but there are too many variables that affect this process. Right now we need soil temperatures to continue to rise, timely rains, and to avoid heavy frost/freezes. If we can get through the next 3-4 week period with those three factors favoring us, we will be on our way. We are fully prepared to make another seed application in a month from now if we feel the need, but once we get past the first week of May, widespread seeding would probably be futile due to the lack of time needed for the plant to mature before summer.

I would be lying if I said there aren't times when we feel a little down when looking at what has happened to the course over the winter. It's daunting to think about how good things were last year and what we now face this year. What lifts our spirits is knowing there aren't many people as experienced as we are at growing in golf courses. We have successfully grown in three golf courses over the past four years and we know what we are doing. We have the knowledge and dedication, our ownership provides us with the resources, and we know a few tricks about the process. We are "pros" at this and I expect we will eventually be back to where we expect to be. Thank you all for your patience.

Over Seeding Complete



We completed our over seeding process this afternoon.  All tees, fairways, collars, and collections areas have been seeded in two directions, fertilized and watered. The guys worked from sun up to sun down to get 120 acres seeded. Thanks to everyone that helped us get this done so quickly.