Staff, Oil Burns, Fertilizer, Trap Edging and Clogged Drains

Just a reminder that the greens aeration begins on the Monday of the Victoria day weekend (the 21st) at 5:00 pm and continues until that Thursday. Each day there will be a nine open for play while we work on the other.

Some more staff introductions. 

This is Mike Connell.  He has been with the golf course for the past six years.   Mike drives the rough mower that cuts around the tees and some of the rough around the course.

Justin Thomas  has also been with the golf course for six years and has taken over Bruce Romkeys mowing duties, which is cutting the rough around the greens.

Here are Nathan Garden and Barb Stone.   Nathan returns for his fourth year and is our all star pin changer.  Barb returns for her third year and is one of our fairway mower operators.  When done their morning jobs both happily lend a hand with what ever needs doing.

This is Dean Macdougall (left) and Gavin Tumblin (right).  These two fellows help with mowing greens, tees, raking bunkers, line trimming trees and what ever else we throw at them. Dean is starting his fourth season and Gavin his third year with the golf course.  

With the return of these folks to the golf course our hourly staff now numbers 12.  Most of the staff right now is working on things to prep the golf course for the season.  When the temperatures increase and the turf takes off their priorities will shift from prep work to mowing and maintaining the golf course on a regular schedule.  I would like to mention how fortunate we are to have such a small turnover rate in returning staff.  Most golf courses generally have close to an 80% non return rate when it comes to seasonal staff.  These people come back to the golf course trained and ready to work, we know they are trustworthy and can be depended upon to get the work done.  It's a pleasure to have them back.
Here are some things were working on.

Last year while working on the trap on three green the mechanical trap rake ruptured a hydraulic line.  The oil spewed on three approach and killed the turf.  This morning we had Dave and Mike strip the sod out of the area and replace it with sod from the nursery.  The golf course has a tool called a sod slide, which is designed to remove narrow strips of sod on greens and tees.

The sod slide in action at the nursery, removing the replacement sod for the approach.

 

The approach on number three, when the spill occurred.

The sod slide makes jobs like this easier as the cut outs and replacements are uniform in size.

The finished product.

Yesterday and today Kyle and Tony completed our first granular application of fertilizer on the greens.  The product we are using is a 70 % methylene urea / 15 % ammonium sulfate, which is designed to start the turf for the summer.  The soil temperatures are reaching a consistently warmer point and the turf is beginning to use the nutrients made available by microbial activity. Here they are at work.

The spreaders we use for the granular applications are scotts 2000's (the bag on the top is to keep the fertilizer dry).  These are very accurate devices specifically designed for evenly distributing greens grade fertilizer.  The fertilizer we use has a very small prill size, engineered to filter into the canopy of the turf and cover in a uniform fashion.   

The spreaders are capable of delivering the fertilizer at very low rates evenly over the surface of the green.  Today's application rate was at 5 pound of product over 1000 square feet.  That rate is broken down even further as the application is split up into two separate passes over the green in two different directions.  Here the fellas are half way through the first pass.

The second pass at a different angle ensures that we avoid missing or over applying to any areas on the turf.  Anybody who has fertilized their own lawn and been left with streaks of green and yellow will understand what I'm talking about.

For the most part there are very few granular applications on the greens.  The granular applications are for "baseline" feeding, evenly delivering nutrients over long period of time as the fertilizer coat breaks down. As the summer months begin we use liquid fertilizers at even smaller rates to spoon feed the turf.  These rate can get as small as one tenth of a pound over a thousand square feet.

 As mention in an earlier post some of the trap edges have crept in over the years.  I took some pictures of Gavin and Dean working on the trap to help illustrate the issue.  We intend to look at 16 trap and 8 green side trap as well.

The white lines are the original edge of the trap.

The original trap was probably round judging from the left side in the picture.  As the sand gets washed down to the lower side the grass grows over.  Once edged the trap will returned to it's former glory.

 One issue on the course we are also tackling this week and next will be the drainage in the area of 8 fairway trap and across 7 fairway. We first started with the drainage in the trap on 8.  It seemed as though it would never drain when a big storm came through.  We checked for clogs in the drain in the trap and found that it was clear.  From there we followed the drain to where it entered the larger 8 inch pipe that crosses from 17 tee all the way to the pond on six. 

A picture from 8 fairway trap looking over to 7 tee.  The blue flag past the trap in the hollow is where the trap drainage enters the 8 inch drain pipe.

We discover that the four inch drain tile running from the trap to the 8 inch main drain was clogged with tree roots.  We suspect the willow to the right side of 7 fair way to be the culprit.  The roots had grown in the the perforations of the pipe and were bound to it so tightly that the pipe had to be removed.

The 15 feet of roots from the pipe.

The four inch drain running from the trap stopped short of the 8 inch line  and ended in a gravel sump.  We decided to drill in the main line and actually insert the four inch line, but when opened up the 8 inch line was clogged with roots as well. We were able to pull some roots out from the 7 fairway side of the pipe, but the 8 fairway side was firmly affixed to the pipe.

The 8 inch main drain line.

This is what we pulled out of 7 fairway side of the pipe.

I managed to get the camera in to the pipe to give us a better idea of what was going on.

The 7 fairway side of the pipe, where we had removed the roots.

                                                                 

The 8 fairway side of the pipe, still full of roots.  We think the roots have infiltrated through joint on the left side of the pipe.

The rain from yesterday confirmed our suspicions that the rest of the main drain line is probably clogged.  If the pipe was clear the water from yesterday would have drained away by now.

 Our plan is expose the main drain ever 80 feet and clear the blockages manually, by sliding a small er pipe from hole to hole.  This weeks rain stopped us from starting the repair this week but next week looks good.  I will update the project as we learn more.

Have fun out there!