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.