Huron Hills is open for play

The front seven holes at Huron Hills is open for play.

Unfortunately, it might be a while before the rest are open. I took these pictures this morning. Until this snow melts and the ground thaws out, I cannot allow play on these holes.

#12 green at Huron Hills (#15 is in the foreground.)

#13 green at Huron

#9 green at Leslie Park.

#11 green at Leslie.

March, 2014 Weather Summary

The high temperature for March was 56.5 degrees (March 31st.) This means I did not have to start off this month's summary with the statement "It was cold." Five days had high temperatures in the 50's. The lowest temperature recorded was -3.6 degrees (13th.) The weather station at Leslie Park had three days were the low temperature was below zero. Twenty-six days got below freezing and only 11 days had highs above 32 degrees. While this may seem cold, compared to what we had been having, it was balmy. The average temperature for the month was 28.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

We recorded 1.02 inches of rain, although at least some of that number was from melting snow. The highest daily rainfall was 0.17 inches (11th.)  Five days had over a tenth of an inch of rain.

The highest windspeed was 31 mph, recorded on the 12th.

The snowpiles are still hanging on, but they do not have much life left in them. Here is a picture from this morning.

I think the guess of April 7th will be closest.

The same area in February.

#9 fairway and green still have some snow on them as well. But there is some green in the picture, as well.

Snow Piles

With the amount of snow we have received this winter (somewhere around 3 feet) the piles of the white stuff in the parking lots are getting pretty big. With the plow that we have, the snow gets pushed in front of the truck. Once the snow pile gets to be around 3 feet tall, it doesn't go any higher. This means that the piles move out into the parking lot. Soon, I have to go out with the loader and move those piles out of the way. The piles end up being around 7-8 feet high. With the way this winter seems to be going, these piles will be here until May. Leave your best guess for when the last snow will be gone from the parking lots in the comments. I can't give anything for the person closest to the actual date except a mention in the blog. My guess is April 15th.

Our plow truck.

"No Parking Between Signs"

A seven foot tall, two hundred foot long pile of snow.

Happy Holidays

Things here at the golf courses have slowed down. The golf course in winter is something a lot of golfers don't see, but skiers, sledders and people out for a walk still utilize the land. Here is a picture of #3 tee at Leslie I took the other day near sunset (which means it was about 4:30 in the afternoon.) Notice the cross country ski tracks in the foreground.

Months ending in "ber"

The last four months of the calender year are the beginning of the year for a golf course. I was told this by David Heroian, the Superintendent of the Myopia Hunt Club in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, where I did my internship in the summer of 1998. The thinking behind this is that everything that you do during the Autumn is in preparation for next summer. For some reason, a large portion of the golfers put away their bags after Labor Day. This may be due to football, the kids going back to school or some other reason, but play really drops in the fall. It shouldn't be the weather, because in my opinion, the fall is the best time to play golf. On many days in September and October, the high temperature will be in the upper sixties or seventies with very few clouds. If we are lucky enough to have this type of weather in April or May, golfers will be lining up to get out on the course. Of course, after a long winter, cooped up inside, I don't blame them for wanting to get outside. During the fall, this same weather will be met with open tee times and discounted rates.

This drop in play gives us an opportunity to perform some maintenance that is disruptive to golfers. The biggest one is the dreaded "aerification." When the greens are aerified, the ball roll can be slowed down and if the holes are not properly filled, the greens can be bumpy. If we can get out and aerify while the grass is still actively growing, this disruption will only be about seven to ten days. When it is put off until later in the year (mid to late October in south-east Michigan) this period can last 2 weeks or more. If the weather does not cooperate, the greens might not fully heal until the spring. Last year, we aerified greens on the 16th and 17th of September. Many times in the month of October, I was asked when we were going to aerify our greens. They had no idea that they were already done, due to us taking advantage of the warm weather.

The tees and fairways are also aerified in the fall. This presents less of a problem for golfers. On the tees, the holes do not come into play because the golfer is allowed to choose where he will hit from and will usually put the ball on a tee. The fairways have longer grass and as with greens, if the holes are filled properly, it should be fully healed in a week or so. Most of the disruption will be one the day that we actually are working on the hole. This will usually only be two or three holes, due to the large areas that we are talking about. Most of our fairways are between one and two acres in size.

Fall is also the time when the summer stress is done with for the most part and the grass will start growing roots again. In Michigan, the predominate grasses used on golf courses are "cool-season" grasses. This includes Kentucky Bluegrass, Creeping Bentgrass, Ryegrass and Fescue. These grasses grow best with the temperatures between 60 and 80 degrees. "Warm-season" grasses such as Zoysia and Bermuda (as well as Crabgrass, which isn't a turfgrass, but a weed) don't start to really grow until the temperature reaches 75 degrees and will thrive until it hits 90 or so. When the temperature gets above 80, cool-season grass begins to shut down and go dormant. This is why areas that don't get irrigation will often turn brown in July and August. When this happens, the grass is just trying to survive and often the roots start to retract. At the end of August, we are lucky to have 2 inches of roots on the greens. By the end of October, I hope to have 4-5 inches of roots. The healthier the grass is going into winter, the better it will be in the spring.  Aerification allows the roots a nice , friendly place for new roots to grow. It also allows oxygen to get down into the rootzone.

Fall is also a great time to control weeds. Most of the weeds that we have on the golf course are "winter-annuals." This means that the weeds sprout in the summer and then over-winter and really take-off in the spring and set seed for the next generation. Because of this and the fertilizer needs of the grass (the fertilizer that we put on the fairways in the spring is pretty much gone) right now is a great time for a "weed-and-feed." This is a fertilizer that is coated with a broadleaf herbicide. It makes sense from a couple of standpoints. The first is that we accomplish two goals with one application. The second is that we can save money. If I were to buy a granular herbicide, the manufacturer would have to coat something with the herbicide. This is often ground-up corncobs. If you do a weed and feed, the fertilizer is what is coated with the herbicide. As one salesman has told me, it is like you buy the herbicide and you get the fertilizer for free. Of course, you don't get anything in this world for free, but if you compare prices, if fertilizer costs $20 and herbicide costs $25, the combined product would cost $30. (I am totally making these prices up, don't quote me on any of this.)

During the early winter months, the grass stops growing and we start on preventative maintenance on our equipment. We change the engine oil, hydraulic oil, fuel and air filters on all of the mowers. We also change the oil on the golf carts, as well as check the filters and spark plugs on the carts. The tee, green and fairway mowers all have reels and bedknives that need to be ground and sharpened. The rough mowers have blades that need to be sharpened. We also clean up the shop. During the hectic summer months, it can get quite messy.


These are just a few of the reasons that, as a golf course superintendent, you cannot trust the calender. The New Year starts in September.

P.S. A big thank you to Robb Johnston for the title of this post. Robb works for the City of Ann Arbor's Natural Area Preservation Unit.  He also is a childrens author. Check out his blog for The Woodcutter and the Most Beautiful Tree

Snow

As soon as I say something, we get 10 inches of snow.

We are all plowed out and are waiting for the sun to come out and warm things up. We don't know right now what this will do to opening, but we still hope to open in late March.

Warming Trend

Thanks to the last couple of days, with temperatures near 50 degrees, most of the snow we had in the last couple of weeks is gone. Greens 5, 8, 9 and 11 still have a fair amount of snow but the rest of them are pretty clear. With that, Leslie Park is hoping to open up the around the 25th of March. Huron Hills could be open as soon as March 4th.

Winter at Leslie Park

Here are some photos of Leslie in the winter.  More snow on the way!

Frost delays and why we have them

 Frost delays can be an annoyance. But they are also a very important tool for helping turf to survive the tough winter months. In this video, Dr. Larry Stowell of PACE Turf explains to golfers how frost can damage turf, and why a frost delay of even only two hours can make a big difference in turf's ability to survive.

Snow Mold

With the snow on the way out, I have decided to update you on an old foe of golf course superintendents.  Snow Mold.  There are two different varieties that are normaly present in Michigan, pink snow mold (Microdochium nivale) and grey snow mold (Typhula incarnata and Typhula ishikariensis).  For grey snow mold, there has to be continuous snow cover for at least 60 days.  Luckily, in southeast Michigan, this rarely happens.  Grey snow mold is also a very destructive pathogen, as it will kill and infect not only the leaf blades, but will also infect the crown of the plant, leaving bare spots in the spring.  On the opposite side of the spectrum, pink snow mold does not even need snow cover to form and infect the grass.  As long as temperatures are below 50 degrees and conditions are damp, pink snow mold can occur.  Usually pink snow mold does not kill the plant, but just infects the leaf blades.  Once the temperatures start to warm up, the crown will start to regenerate leaf tissue and the damage will disappear.  Here is a picture of some pink snow mold that I saw on #5 fairway.

Unfortunatly, you can not see the characteristic pink ring around the outside of the spot, but you can see the white mycelium in the middle of the spot.  Luckily, it appears that we had an easy winter in regards to snow mold.  The ground was frozen before we had much snow and I have not seen any snow mold on the greens or tees, just some on the fairways and more in the rough.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Also, here are some monkeys that some pranksters put up in a tree near #6 tee.

MELT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are waiting for the snow to melt. The snow quantity and quality make it hard to get around the golf course right now, so mostly I have been doing projects in the shop. I have built a couple of wood duck houses, a couple of bat houses as well as some store bought bluebird houses and a butterfly house. I have been working on recertifiying our Michigan Turfgrass Environmental Stewardship Program credentials and begining the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program certification. I have a new weather station that will be going up. It will give me such readings as temperature, humidity, solar radiation, wind speed and direction. This will help me calculate daily evapotranspriation rates (the amount of water a plant uses in a day) as well as posting a daily weather log on sites like weatherunderground.com. This weekend looks like it will be warm and we should be able to get out more and start the spring clean-up.

Snowman

Some kids took advantage of the snowday we had yesterday and built a snowman on the bridge near 12 tee.

Snow (Again)

So, looking at the weather, I decided that I should remove some of the snow on #5 and #8 greens. The temperatures and sun looked to be the right combination to make sure that we get some of the ice off of those greens. It worked....... and then we get 6 more inches of snow. The ice underneath the snow is, for the most part gone, however, so it was time well spent. Here are some pictures from last Friday. At the top is a close up of #5. You can see the ice that was underneath the snow. The second image is #8 green (which get a lot more shade, but had less ice than #5 for some reason)At the bottom is #5 green.

Snow!

Well, the weather has made sure that we remember it is still winter. We got around 8 inches of snow and it doesn't look like it will be going anywhere for the next couple of weeks. Maybe it just wanted make the Olympics feel welcome. At this point, I am still not worried too much about ice on the greens, but it would make me feel better to have a little February thaw.

Having the snow makes me appreciate the modifications I did to my golf cart this fall. I lifted the suspension 3 inches and added some snow tires. This makes it easier to get around in the white stuff, but if we had anymore, I would not be able to get out on the course except by walking. Maybe I should invest in some snowshoes or cross country skis?

The snow cover will give me an opportunity to get some things done inside the shop. I have a wood duck house or two to build as well as some bluebird houses.


I did receive a nice package in the mail the other day, new flags!. I will get a picture up soon. (Edit: I got them uploaded. The one to the left is the blue. All the flags are at the bottom of the page, as well as the new clubhouse flag that will go under the American flag)They have the new logo and we will go from the pin location sheet to a front, middle, back system. For front locations, we will use a red/white flag, while a white flag will be used for middle and back locations will get the blue/white flags. The system will give more flexibility on where we put the cups. With the old system, the cup would never get put to close to the borders between locations. With this set up, hopefully we will have more variability as well as a visual marker of where the cup is.