Orchard Trees

Before Doctor Leslie donated the land for Leslie Park Golf Course, he and his wife had been running the land as a farm. On this farm, he planted wheat, corn and other annual crops, but a large portion of the land was devoted to orchards. They had cherries, pears and apples, as well as blueberries and raspberries.  The area where 5, 6, 7 and 8 are now located was predominately pears, apples and cherries. A small portion of this orchard was retained when the course was built. It was originally a 12 row by 12 row section, with a few trees outside of this square. That would have been 144 trees.

When I started with the City of Ann Arbor, there were less than 100 of these trees left. Through the previous 40 plus years, the trees naturally died out. Since the purpose of Leslie Park was to be a golf course and not an orchard, this was not a priority. The life expectancy of these trees is not overly long, and since they were planted around the time of World War II or before, it became clear to me that if nothing was done, we would lose the entire orchard. Since this was an integral part of the strategy for playing holes 6 and 8, as well as an homage to the former use of the land, we decided to start replanting the orchard.

The first step was to decide what to plant. the northern part of the orchard still had 6 cherry trees while the rest are Bosc and Bartlett pears.  It was decided to re-establish the northern part with cherries. The "holes" in the orchard were filled in with a mixture of Bartlett pears, Comice pears, Honeycrisp apples and Red Delicious apples. The apples were added to bring about some of the historcal feel to the orchard, even though this part did not have any apples. We started slowly on the 8 fairway side. This was to get a feel for how to proceed and give us some experience with the different trees. In 2010, we planted 16 apple and pear trees. We soon discovered that the deer love the apple trees but leave the pears pretty much alone. We started to experiment with deer deterrents and finally settled on cages. The following year, we planted another 18 pears and apples, along with 12 cherry trees. This year, we got 8 Bartlett pears, 4 Comice pears and 4 Montmorency cherries. With some failed trees, this brings the total number of new trees in the orchard to 39 pear/apples and 16 cherries. A quick count shows about 10 more "holes" in the original 12x12 square. We are also going to re-establish some pears along the cart path on #8.

A cherry tree with the wire cage around it.

Beside these orchard trees, we planted 40 White Pines (Pinus strobus) in the spring of 2009. These were donated by the City of Ann Arbor's Natural Areas Preservation Division and The Adopt-A-Park program they have spearheaded. In the fall of 2009, we brought in six maple trees. These were 2.5 inches in diameter and were about 12 feet tall when planted. In the following spring, we brought in two more maples that were 4 inches in diameter. In the fall of 2010, we replaced some dead white pines with 4 blue spruce (Picea pungens.)

As a golf course manager, you have to stay one step ahead. As an ancient Chinese proverb says, "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is right now."

Here is a satellite view of the orchard from a few years ago. You can see the gaps between the rows. These are the holes that we are trying to fill.

 
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Opening Day?

As I write this, the temperature is 32 degrees and there is a 24 degree wind chill, so take the following with a grain of salt. We are thinking of opening up sometime next week. I was just out putting bunker rakes in all of the bunkers and setting the times on the tee time clocks. (I had originally set the time yesterday, but was reminded by one of the guys on the crew that this weekend is the start of daylight savings time. Whoops.)

We have rolled the greens once already and plan on rolling again. We would also like to mow them. Other things on the list: changing cups, putting out trash containers, putting out flags and tee markers, raking bunkers and cleaning up the sticks and other debris that has collected over the winter.

Things might be a little rough out there, but last year we opened up on March 31st, so this would be 2+ weeks earlier. I will end with this picture, because I really like it.

Photos in the dead of winter

Last week, I was driving around with a volunteer who helps me cut down invasive shrubs during the winter. He remarked about how green the course was, for February. Forward to today. I have been organizing the photos on my computer when I took a second look at some of the photos. It struck me just how GREEN things really are in the summer. Right now, things are kind of monochrome. Mostly brown and white. The green that we see is really a greenish-yellow. Here are some photos to brighten your day. Every day is one day closer to opening day!

#4 green, looking back toward the fairway.

#7 green, in the fall of 2011.

#9 fairway, early morning.

The weather station, with native indiangrass in the foreground. I love the blue sky contrasted with the green grass.

Bumble bee on some Joe-pye-weed

Blue-flag iris in the native plant garden on #12

Lilac Cherry blooms. (Thanks to reader J-Law for pointing it out.)

Cherry blooms between #6 green and #5 fairway.

Pear orchard behind #7 green. Native redbud tree in the foreground.

#8 green.

#13 fairway.

Poa Seed Heads

Annual bluegrass (Poa annua) is more commonly known as poa, even though one of the most important turfgrasses shares the same genus name (Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis.) Poa is considered a weed by many turf managers due to many factors such as its shallow root system, tendency to die during heat, drought or cold stress and the fact that it is not a grass that is planted on purpose. Most of this stem from poa being a summer annual.

Under normal circumstances, poa germinates in the spring, grows like crazy and dies in the winter. On golf courses throughout the country, it has been so well taken care of, that it will live several years until things get really bad.

Then it will die. This usually happens in the heat of summer, but will also happen during really cold or icy winters.

To make a long story short, bentgrass is better adapted to survive on a putting green at the extreme stress periods but poa out-competes the bentgrass during normal weather. If I could get the poa out of my greens, I would. Instead, turf managers have developed strategies for maintaining the poa at times when the poa would normally die.

Also, being an annual, poa makes a lot of seed. This seed is viable at a very early stage and can persist at very low mowing heights. This can be a problem on greens where we are striving for the smoothest surface possible. Right now is the time of year when poa is producing most of it's seed. Here are a couple of pictures of the seed on a fairway.

The light yellow-green spots are poa seed heads.

A close-up shot.

Using Michigan State University's Growing Degree Days Tracker, I used a plant growth regulator called Embark to stop some of the production of the seed on the greens. This is the first time I have tried this and am hopeful that we see an 80 to 90% reduction of seed heads.

Odds and ends.

Here are some picture I have taken in the two weeks since I last wrote an entry.