Winter Project: #10 Bridge

Though the initial intentions in building a stone walk bridge to the front of #10 green were good, the construction hasn't held up to the wrath of Mother Nature very well. Last winter, the bridge repeatedly got pounded by the rushing creek created by several rainstorms producing more than 1" of rain in less than 24 hours. As a result, our crew had to do our best to piece the stone bridge back together by hand on four different occasions. Being a safety concern as well, we knew we needed a better long term solution.

With input from the Greens & Grounds committee, we decided to build a wood bridge in similar fashion to the existing bridges on the hole. Built in-house, we believe this new bridge will be much safer and should provide ample room for the majority of rushing storm water to run underneath the bridge freely. A fairly simple project that will save us labor this winter, and improves the safety and aesthetics of this key hole here at Winchester.

Winter Project: Sprinkler Spacing - #17

As we all know by now, the biggest component of our success in having good summer playing conditions lies with the irrigation system. This property is challenging to start with: lots of elevation change, shade, rolls, hills, bumps, swales, clay soils, etc. And in the summer the number one thing grass needs to survive and be healthy is water. If our irrigation system doesn't put the water exactly where it's needed, in the most efficient manner possible, we have to make up for it by watering by hand. And let me tell you, 80 acres is alot of grass for two guys (our dedicated irrigators) to water by hand...daily. So we rely heavily on our irrigation system to do the bulk of the job for us during our nighttime irrigation cycles.

This past winter we focused on the functionality of the irrigation system: making sure it all works. We took inventory and fixed any leaks, or misadjustments in the arc of the sprinkler, a few nozzling and drive change outs, unburied sprinklers that were lost, raised and levelled many that had been knocked around. We made sure every sprinkler turned on, popped up, rotated properly, and turned off when we wanted it to. Everything now works and works properly.

While doing all this, we were also able to get the whole system GPS mapped, so we have an accurate record of where every component of the irrigation system is. The map also serves as a important tool in other ways: we can use a digital version of it to turn on sprinklers from a computer, iPhone or iPad and we use it during projects to make sure we don't trench through pipes or wires. Yet one critical example of the benefit of precise GPS mapping showed up right away: how poor our sprinkler spacing is in many areas.

Good sprinkler spacing should look like this:

This is triangular spacing (on another golf course) that is exactly like what is intended here at Winchester: every head makes a perfect equilateral triangle with 65 ft (plus or minus 2 ft) between each sprinkler. The sprinkler and nozzles are designed to irrigate best when installed in this fashion.

This is what just a small section of the spacing looks like here at Winchester (this is hole #14):

You can see triangles, but they are far more imperfect than those above. And the spacing between heads ranges from as low as 56 ft (ignore the edges...they're a different story) to 75 ft. It may not seem like much, but 10 ft in either direction means a 10 ft miss or a 10 ft overlap. So every triangle above that's not a perfect triangle helps explain summer wet and dry spots. Makes it a little easier to see why consistency in the fairways is difficult to achieve. And the longer we use sprinklers, instead of Mother Nature's perfectly uniform rain, to irrigate, the more pronounced the wet/dry spots become.

So one of our biggest focuses this winter is to try to correct the worst of the worst spots throughout the course. Correcting all the spacing would means hundreds of sprinklers: dig one up, remove it, patch the line, dig up it's proper location, cut the line, patch the sprinkler in, bury, and repeat. Very labor intensive and time consuming. But our focus is on the high playability areas and the areas we know we had a very difficult time keeping turf alive last summer.

 The picture above shows our crew moving a sprinkler near #17 approach. The dirt on the right is where the sprinkler was, the left is where it's being moved to. You can see how far off it was from it's properly spaced location. Making these spacing corrections in several areas throughout the rest of the course should make a significant impact on how well the irrigation system performs and improve turf health, playability and overall consistency this upcoming summer.



Winter Project: #3 Bunker

Wow....over 2 months since the last update. No excuse for that. I have plenty of catching up to do. Instead of asking for forgiveness, let me just get right into the good stuff:

Winter is definitely upon us. Twelve straight days of frost delays were broke today by the first rain we've seen in 3 weeks. But we'd love to see more (I know you golfers don't!). We're over 12" behind last year's rainfall, and while that is no real indicator of how the rest of the winter will be, a light rainy season most always means headaches for the following summer in terms of grass health, water availability, etc. So let's hope we see some more....soon. The good news is dry, cold weather has allowed us to step back from maintaining grass so aggressively and finally tackle some projects we've had on our to-do lists for quite some time. We've been so busy I have a half dozen projects to update you on, but we'll start one by one:

The lower greenside bunker on #3 was brought to my attention because it seemed to have little to no sand in the front right lobe and players would hit the soil with their clubs. We already know this bunker is a problem when it rains, or even when we irrigate heavily, as the sand constantly washes down off this flashed up face and ends up in the bottom of the bunker, often contaminated with silt and soil. So it's no surprising that not enough of it got put back up on the face of the bunker. But as we began moving sand around, we noticed that the subsoil in the bunker was soft and squishy. It appears some natural drainage is occurring in this bunker. So we resolved to address all of the issues with the bunker at once.

First came the removal of the contaminated sand that caused compaction and poor drainage in the bunker. You can see the subsoil drainage issue in the foreground of the picture:

After the removal of the sand (which we will recycle and use to lightly topdress the soggy left portion of hole #14), we added an "upside-down smiley" drain to catch the problem water:

Next, we chose to install a bunker liner fabric. Many other courses use a similar liner, and they've been known to work very well for two purposes: to prevent sand and soil contamination which keeps the sand clean and pure, and to help hold the sand on the flashed up faces of the bunker to prevent against major washouts during rainstorms:

With over 60" of rain last year, you can imagine how much time our crew spends rebuilding washed out bunkers after a big storm. So this bunker will be a test...if the liner works well, it would make great sense to use it in other problem bunkers moving forward to save labor by lessening the impact of washouts and keep the bunkers in a more pure and better performing state.

Member Volunteer Workday

Last Tuesday, October 4th, the combined Winchester and ValleyCrest staff hosted the inaugural Member Volunteer Workday. The idea was generated in the Greens & Grounds committee and headed by committee member Craig Prim and superintendent Jeremy Payne. The support and volunteerism for the idea was overwhelming and nearly 40 members showed up to participate. Though the workday was only 3 hours, a large amount of work was accomplished, and everyone was able to retire to the club-hosted BBQ and happy hour afterwards tired, sweaty and with a great sense of accomplishment. The experience and response was so positive that we hope to have this be at least a bi-annual event moving forward. Below are some pictures of just a few of the jobs that were tackled, along with some hard-working members working hand-in-hand with our maintenance team:

Removing blackberries on #14 (also removed plants on #13 & 16)

Clearing and mulching walkpaths (completed #2, 3, 5/6 & 7)



Driving range ball retrieval (this is like a "Where's Waldo?" photo!)

Weeding and clean-up of annual flower beds at the clubhouse (also cleaned up all on-course planters)

Sanding & seeding tees (all tees were completed)

Sanding & seeding fairways (all fairways were completed)

Landscape clean-up at #6 restrooms (further clean-up and mulching to come)

Landscape clean-up at #12/16 restrooms (further clean-up and mulching to come)

All in all a very successful event and the staff of both Winchester and ValleyCrest wish to extend a huge thank you to all our members who participated in both this workday and for other various volunteer efforts around the course. We look forward to working with you all again soon!

Late Summer Aeration

It's been quite some time since I last found time to update our blog, but this week starts the end-of-season maintenance practices that will span the next few months and updates here I know will be much appreciated.

Over the last two days, we completed our late-summer aeration of the greens. We did things a little differently this time, trying to find the best balance between efficiency, speed of recovery, achieving desired agronomic goals and minimal disruption to golfers. In all these aspects I feel we were very successful.

Using two newer-technology ProCore aerators, we were able to complete the full aeration process to all greens in 10 hours. Our new method involved putting down the topdressing sand first, aerating with hollow tines over the sand, applying fertilizers and amendments, dragging all the dried material to fill the holes, blowing off the removed and unwanted thatch, and finally watering it all in. Using this method eliminated the laborious task of having to manually remove all the plugs before sanding, which not only added time and alot of extra traffic to the green, but generated alot of waste material that builds up in the green waste area over time. By dragging the plugs, we knocked off alot of the existing sand, rich with organic material and fertilizers already existing in the green, to be mixed back in with new sand, leaving only the dry, problematic thatch material at the surface to be easily blown off into the surrounds to later be chopped up by mowers.

Aerating with 3/8" hollow tines over topdressing sand

Dragging in sand and plugs

 We also used a smaller size tine (3/8" as opposed to 1/2") to aid in speed of recovery. The beauty of it is that even though we used a smaller tine, we condensed the spacing such that we were able to remove the same amount of thatch as the larger tines. As a superintendent mentor of mine once told me: "A million small holes heals just as fast a dozen small holes; it's not the quantity, it's the size of the area that needs to be grown back over that determines healing time."

It always helps to take a step back and really think about this idea, along with many others, to determine WHY to aerate and also HOW. Doing practices such as these "just because everyone does it" is unwise and often unnecessary. There should always be a stated and desired goal to intense maintenance practices. In this case, ours is multi-fold: relieve compaction from summer traffic, provide an opening to allow nutrients, air and water to move deeper into the soil profile and removal of thatch near the surface that inhibits water penetration, facilitates optimum disease conditions and softens the receptiveness of the surface. Note that the first two goals can be achieved with solid tines and very little disruption. The messiness of pulling a core coupled with alot of sand is for the removal and dilution of thatch, which we currently have a good amount of. The long term goal is to reduce thatch to manageable levels then implement practices that constantly dilute and breakdown thatch without major aeration to hopefully one day move away from major disruptions, like these types of aerations, in favor of more numerous and minor disruptions, like bi-weekly verticutting and light topdressing coupled with solid tine aerations.

In any case, our new methods and practices will lend to overall better conditions, both long term and short term, and the greens should be back in shape faster than ever. A sneak preview of the speed of recovery can be found by watching the driving range practice green, which was aerated last Thursday and will show recovery results five days ahead of the rest of the course. So as soon as you think the practice green is good, the course will be the same 5 days later.

Driving range practice green - 5 days into recovery



The Irrigation "Dance"

As we are officially in the middle of summer now and true heat has finally found us, an update on summer stress, certain eyesore areas and the role irrigation plays in both is due.

As much as we would love to say that all the work we've done over last fall and the winter to improve plant health, soil conditions and the irrigation system would guarantee nothing but green grass, the truth is that the road to recovery from the woes of last summer is a long-term process. We've definitely seen some major improvement, in particular on the holes that received extra attention and topdressing this spring, like #3, 4 and 12. But we still have areas that are giving us headaches, for a variety of reasons.

In addressing the irrigation issues discovered this winter, part of the process was to completely reprogram the irrigation system. Doing so essentially sets all sprinklers to a uniform base percentage of 100%. However, we all know that sprinklers in the shade probably don't need 100% irrigation. Likewise, areas on the tops of hills or on south-facing slopes may need more then 100%.

So in firing up the irrigation system for the summer, these are the areas we are slowing finding. Areas where there's either too much irrigation, or not enough. We have the ability to adjust every sprinkler out there, but finding the right combination of percentages for any given area can be a challenge. In trying to dry out a wet area, we can adjust down too much, and get too dry. And vice versa. So we "dance the dance" with the irrigation system. But, in time, we find that balance. Getting there sometimes doesn't look pretty, but once we're there, we're set. And once the affected grass recovers, we shouldn't have to worry about those spots again, and we move on to others. Over the long-term, we eventually get the entire course balanced out such that when we need to, for tournaments in particular, we can dry down everything equally, to make it firm and fast. Then we can rewet everything uniformally as well for a fast recovery. This is the end goal, and we are on our way there, albeit little by little.

Another "good news, bad news" fact to point out is: bad news = some grass is very dry, brown and some of it beyond recovery (which is currently being reseeded) and doesn't look very pretty; good news = the majority of the grass looking this way is Poa annua, the grass we least desire to see and maintain. So while we'd prefer not to see overly dried out areas, we are effectively separating the strong from the weak; the Poa from the ryegrass. And the picture below is a perfect example of that:

You can easily see both the survival/drought strength of the ryegrass, as that is pretty much the only green grass in the picture, as well as the benefits of the aeration we've been continuously performing, as those are the regularly spaced spots the ryegrass is happily growing in. So as we continue to aerate and continue to seed in ryegrass, these areas of strong, healthy turf will become more dense, with better coverage and eventually the majority of the Poa will be gone. Again, long term, but a nice end result to dream about. Our commitment to this goal is unwavering, and we again thank you for your commitment and support as well.

Driving Range Putting Green

Many who've played Winchester recently have probably noticed that the driving range putting green has suffered a bit of a setback. Due to an electrical malfunction with the irrigation in this area, a portion of the green didn't receive water for a prolonged period of time and we've had some turf loss as a result.

However, the irrigation issue has been addressed and the green is on it's way back to recovery. This past Tuesday we verticut to remove the dried out turf, needletined to create holes for bentgrass seed, overseeded and lightly topdressed the damaged area. With daily light irrigation and with our golfers help in avoiding trafficking this portion of the green, we hope to see significant regrowth within the next few weeks.

We've made great strides at correcting and improving irrigation issues throughout the course this year, and work will continue to ensure that mishaps such as this don't become a recurring event.

Summer Aeration

I've slacked on posting updates and will have to play catch up soon, but for now we'll touch on the present. While the course is holding up well right now, even through the recent two day heat wave, we can't forget our ultimate goal: to build a stronger, healthier turf. A big part of this is the continued effort to increase rooting mass and depth. The best way to do this is to continue to make aeration holes. These holes allow water to penetrate deeper and get oxygen to the roots. Both these stimulants encourage the roots to dive deep in the holes. The deeper the roots, the more aggressive we can be in the future with major aerations, cultivation practices, pushing for faster greens speeds and drying the greens down without fear of losing grass.

Here's the machine we used yesterday to needletine aerate the entire back 9. You can see how thin, but long, the tines are.

Here's how the green looks immediately following a pass made by the machine. It's hard to tell in the photo, but that flag sits about 4 1/2" deep in the aeration hole.

We immediately follow the aeration with a quick roll of the green and the surface looks like above. The holes are still there, but hardly noticeable, with virtually no disruption to the playability of the surface.

The front 9 will be completed within the next week and we will continue to use practices such as these to help improve the growth and health of the greens through the summer. I look forward to the day we only have to water the greens once a week because the roots are so deep, and we can keep the surface firmer and faster.

Course Aeration Wrap Up

There has definitely been some delay since my last post, but it's not for lack of activity. Aeration was a challenge, but a rewarding one. The course has made alot of progress in recovery over the last week, and I wanted to share some pictures to confirm that fact: here's #17 green in time lapse form, both in wide shot and close up:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 5

Day 14

Day 1

Day 2

Day 5

Day 14

So though the greens may still be mostly slow, and a bit bumpy, the recovery is over 90% complete. And it might even be a bit farther along if it weren't for the past three sub-60 degree days and 2.3" of rain. But the sun is back, the temps are climbing, and we are beginning to work on speed and perfect smoothness in preparation for our Women's and Men's Invitationals coming up. The pain of aeration is over, let the good golfing season commence!



Course Aeration: Day 3

The end is in sight! Only one more day of course closure left for aeration, and I'm happy to say we've been largely successful. Yesterday, we finished aerating, overseeding and topdressing all of the approaches:

Dragging in approach topdressing

We made some progress on the fairways as well, though we only got through one and a half holes before all our tines were destroyed. The soil below 2" is particularly unforgiving on our equipment and we're constantly making adjustments. We'll continue pushing our way through pulling plugs on at least the four holes that we will be topdressing, and may switch to a less disruptive aeration (solid tines) in order to continue work in between play once we open back up.

Winchester soil vs. heavy duty tines

We also finished cleaning up the second half of the greens that were completed on Day 2 and have begun double rolling them to smooth the surface back out. The greens will remain a bit sandy and slow as we open for play this weekend, but will get gradually better through next week. With this ideal recovery weather we're getting, the impact of aeration should be minimal after 2 weeks and the greens should be excellent shape for the Sugar Pine tournament at the end of the month.

Course Aeration: Day 2

Another successful day of course aeration complete. The second half of the greens were completed yesterday. We also completed some follow up clean-up on the greens that were completed yesterday, by blowing the excess sand across and off the green. This helps top of any holes that were still lacking sand as well as provide a cleaner surface, exposing more leaf tissue to increase photosynthesis and recovery.

#17 after Day 1

#17 after Day 2

Green surface after Day 2

We also aerated and overseeded the lower driving range tees, and aerated half of the approaches.

Approach aeration

Today we focus on finishing aeration of the approaches as well as seeding them with more ryegrass and topdressing. We also begin aerating fairways today, starting with the holes we will also be topdressing (our worst performing in terms of drainage, playability and plant health): #3, 4, 8 and 12. Still alot of work to be done, but we're making steady progress!

Course Aeration: Day 1

Day 1 of our course aeration is in the books and the crew is heading out as I write to finish off the rest of the greens. We completed the entire aeration process for just over half the greens yesterday. Today we'll finish off the rest of the greens with plans to tackle fairways and approaches over the final two days. So far, so good!

Our process for greens aeration essentially goes like this:
-Core aerate (pull plugs) the greens to a depth of just over 4" (breaking through the previous compaction layer existing around 3.5")
-Use walkmowers with push bars to push the plugs to the collars
-Shovel plugs into carts for disposal (mostly to fill in ruts and potholes on our service roads)
-Verticut in two directions (helps remove even more thatch and cleans up the leftover plugs at the same time)
-Heavily topdress with sand
-Apply bentgrass seed and fertilizer
-Drag the sand with a brush in four directions to fill holes and smooth surface
-Lightly irrigate (to knock the sand down into the holes and relieve some of the stress we just put on the greens)

Here are a few pictures of the process from yesterday:

Pushing plugs on #10

Verticut clean-up on #17

Topdressing #2

Audubon & Bluebirds

As promised, here is the last of the updates on current hot topics here at Winchester. Many have noticed that some bird boxes have been installed around the course. These boxes are designed and installed specifically for bluebird nesting, although they sometimes are used by other small birds like tree swallows and house wrens.

Building, installing and monitoring these boxes has long been a personal passion of mine and, fortunately, the property of Winchester and the values of ValleyCrest lend themselves perfectly to continuing this hobby. We at ValleyCrest encourage every property we become partners with to participate in the Aububon International Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses. Involvement in this certification program by no means obligates a course to become 100% organic, or go "all green", but merely provides helpful resources, guidelines and assistance in encouraging courses to become more aware of their maintenance practices' interactions and effects on the environment and wildlife habitats. In all honesty, most all superintendents I know love and respect nature and the environment (it's why most of us have these jobs in the first place!) so participation in this program is often occurs naturally and with very little extra effort.

Part of the Audubon certification process is to complete some environmental and wildlife-related projects on the course. Building and monitoring these bluebird habitats fit that niche perfectly. During the winter, while stuck inside during rain storms, we built 9 boxes to start with. They were installed about a month ago, and you can see already that Winchester's birds have taken a liking to them.

This box is located on #17 near the maintenance building. We build these side doors for easy monitoring and you can see a bluebird nest here is nearing completion.

And as of this morning, the box on the driving range near the pitching green already has the start of a family! The mama bird was sitting on these eggs as I opened it, but flew away before I could get a picture.

We'll continue to provide you with updates on the birds and these boxes, as well as other parts of the Audubon certification program that we will continually be working on.

Battling Poa

As promised, here's the update on the next hot-button topic here at Winchester: Poa annua (also know as Annual Bluegrass), and what to do about it. As I'm sure many people know, this battle is raging on golf courses across the US. And few, if any, have been largely successful at taking down the enemy. In fact, many have simply chosen to embrace it, and nurture Poa to become a decent, sometimes excellent, playing surface on it's own.

However, we still have enough of the originally intended grass for our putting surfaces, bentgrass, that it makes the fight still worth fighting. Bentgrass is optimal not merely as a more consistent, smoother putting surface, but also from a management standpoint, as it tends to need less water, less fertilization, and is susceptible to fewer diseases (in this part of the country) than Poa. So the war battles on....

A key part of our Poa management strategy is chemical control through growth regulation. We use two plant growth regulators (Trimmit and Primo) to help us give the bentgrass a competitive edge over the Poa. So far this year, we've made two applications of this mix, and you can begin to see some mild results already:

#18 Green: A very obvious visual - the Poa really stands out here, partly from the production of seedheads (which come out in a flush as the plant gets stressed, and cause alot of bumpiness that golfers really don't enjoy) as well as the yellowing and browning cause by the growth regulator itself.

Here's a bit closer showing the selectivity of the growth regulators: healthy bentgrass surrounding a really stressed out and stunted patch of Poa.

And even closer....this is what we're looking for. The lighter green, short blades with attached brownish seedheads is the Poa, stunted and tight. But the longer, greener blades of bentgrass are poking through. So even as the Poa may not completely die out, we hope to see this bentgrass continue to growth, thrive and push through and over the Poa to choke it out and leave us only with our most desired grass.

This is definitely not a process that occurs overnight. It's a long and difficult road. But combined with other management practices that favor bentgrass over Poa, we hope to beat back the current population and attempt to revert the greens to bentgrass, to the best of our ability. Stay tuned for other ways that we manage to give bentgrass the competitive edge in future posts. And for the last hot-button topic: bluebird boxes and Audubon!

Drainage Quick Fixes

It's been some time since our last post, but it's not for lack of things to post about. In fact, just the opposite....we've all been so busy there's been no real time to sit down and punch out an update!

But as we get busier, we understand that these updates and educational posts are even more important to our members and customers. So allow me to catch you up on the three most talked about aspects of the course at this moment. We'll start by dedicating this post to the first: drainage.

The course has dried out beautifully in between the now sparser rain storms...except for a few very obvious areas: #3 approach, #4 blue tee and #8 fairway. After much investigation and exploration, we're at a loss to pinpoint where this water is coming from to be able to control it from the exact source. It seems to be seeping out the hillsides everywhere. So while we explore some more permanent and long term solutions, so we don't end up dealing with this problem areas every spring, we've gone to work on some rough, generic, but effective drainage solutions.

After digging this huge hole to investigate the irrigation mainline, nothing was found leaking, and the water continues to fill the hole from elsewhere. A drain  has now been installed from this seepage point down the entire approach, and another in the right rough about 50 yards out. Both should dry this area out and provide better turf conditions.

Though not very obvious in this picture, the back right corner of this tee has about 1/2" of water sitting on it. We've since put in a drain around this corner to catch the water and divert it around the tee. The tee is already much drier and we've been able to finally mow the whole thing.

#8 fairway is by far the worst problem. Water seeps out of severl locations along the right rough, as seen in this picture, and runs along the turf surface through large portions of the fairway landing area. Despite many existing drains in this area, the water continues to cause a problem. Here we've since cut a trench along the rough line to stop the water from reaching the fairway and diverted it to a functioning drain we found. With a few days of sun, the fairway should dry out enough for us to mow and begin getting it back into much more playable condition.

Thank you for your patience with these projects, and keep checking back for updates on a more long-term solution that we've begun looking into. Also check back soon for updates on two other hot-button topics: Poa control and new bluebird nestboxes. More coming soon!

Winter Storm Update

Just when most of us hoped that winter was nearing a close, we've been again put to the test the past two weeks. Here's the data: 11.7 inches of rain in the last 12 days (only one day without any rain), with a little bit of snow mixed in. And here's the damage: 

Bunkers are washed out throughout the course. With this much rain it's inevitable, but we hope to have them completely rebuilt and playable by the middle of next week, after the rain stops. It will take about 5 guys almost two full days to tend to every bunker, so it's pointless to attempt the clean-up until the rain stops for a good few days. Please play these hazards as ground under repair until we're able to get to them.

Fortunately, only two trees came down in mostly out of the way locations. Here's an oak that fell across the path on #10 near the crossing on Lodgeview.

And the other fell near the pump house on #11, also blocking the path. Both paths have been cleared and the trees will eventually  be cut up for firewood.

The walking bridge on #10 washed out and the rocks have become very unstable. We can fix this quickly, but a more stable, long-term fix will eventually be needed here as this happens almost every time we get significant rain.

The good news is that nothing disastrous has happened over the course of the storm, and the end is in sight, with sun and temperatures climbing back into the high 60s forecasted as early as Sunday. The course will be wet, and a little shaggy until we can get all our equipment out to mow, but we plan on having everything looking and playing great by the end of next week!