November 30 and our first snow fall! Yesterday we finished the long process of winterizing the golf course. The three most important parts to shutting down the golf course for the winter are the application of the winter fungicide, tarping of the greens and de-watering the irrigation system. My last post covered the irrigation blow out with a video explaining the process and you can view it here.
After the irrigation is blown out, we begin spraying the greens, tees and fairways with a fungicide that will protect them from pink and grey snow mould. These two diseases are very common in turf from any region that has significant snow fall during the winter. Pink snow mould can be seen even before snow fall in cold damp environments, but is most commonly seen in areas where snow has sat for the winter. Grey snow mould will only grow under snow that remains for sixty days. While both diseases can be devastating, recovery from pink is much more likely than from grey. In Nova Scotia, and particularly around Halifax, the sixty days of snow coverage necessary to grow grey snow mould is not very common, but we use the same fungicide for both species of snow mould and are protected for the winter. Could we just take our chances, not apply the fungicide and save our selves a whole bunch of money? Yes we could, but in the event that we have damage we would have to spray a similar application in the spring, and then try to regrow the damaged areas during our already short golf season. In the long run the prevention is the wiser of the two options.
One experiment we are going to try this year is to see what happens if the turf is left to fend for itself during the winter. The picture above shows a sheet of plywood lying on two fairway, we placed it there before Tony made his application to the turf. We marked the area and will compare it to the rest of the fairway next spring.
Another aspect of closing the course is aerification using solid tines. On the fairways, the aeration machine, a Toro 660, is mounted on the tractor by three point hitch. The tines are 3/4 inch thick stainless steel rod that are cut down to 6 inches and will penetrate about five inches into the soil. The rough ground here at Oakfield wears them down fairly quickly but we usually get two to three areifications to all the fairways before they are too short to be of use. The above picture also shows the pattern the machine leaves. Below is a golf pencil inserted in the hole for reference.
We also aerate the greens with solid tines, but much smaller versions mounted on the Toro 648 walk behind aerator. Here's the same pencil in a green aerification hole on 16 green.
In either case the surface is opened up and allows water to flows from the surface and into the soil. This helps in reducing ice injury in the spring. If water is left on the surface it turns to ice and can suffocate the plant. The aeration also increase gas exchange and helps to reduce compaction.
Tarping follows the aeration and fungicide application. As our experience grows with each year of tarping our program becomes more refined. To see an article we wrote in 2010 on tarping click here. In the first year we would double tarp numbers 16, 8, 12, 13 and 5, however we have discovered that only number 13 really needs the expense of a double tarp. Being exposed to the wind directly from Fish lake the green needs more protection from desiccation or drying out. While we still haven't had a real winter to test the validity of the tarps, they have proven to be of benefit in the milder conditions of the last few winters. The benifit, which can be expensive (one tarp is about $1500), is certainly visible in the spring conditions, which leads us to quicker establishment of better playing surfaces and faster winter recovery. Installation of the tarps takes about 3 days with five staff. It can be difficult and is very labour intensive ...perhaps that's why they groan when ever I mention the tarps. We use over 700 bags of sand, more than 3000 staples to hold down 138,000 square feet of tarp, all of which must be installed by hand.
Here's a sped up video of us tarping number five green.
After the irrigation is blown out, we begin spraying the greens, tees and fairways with a fungicide that will protect them from pink and grey snow mould. These two diseases are very common in turf from any region that has significant snow fall during the winter. Pink snow mould can be seen even before snow fall in cold damp environments, but is most commonly seen in areas where snow has sat for the winter. Grey snow mould will only grow under snow that remains for sixty days. While both diseases can be devastating, recovery from pink is much more likely than from grey. In Nova Scotia, and particularly around Halifax, the sixty days of snow coverage necessary to grow grey snow mould is not very common, but we use the same fungicide for both species of snow mould and are protected for the winter. Could we just take our chances, not apply the fungicide and save our selves a whole bunch of money? Yes we could, but in the event that we have damage we would have to spray a similar application in the spring, and then try to regrow the damaged areas during our already short golf season. In the long run the prevention is the wiser of the two options.
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| Tony applying our winter fungicide to 18 green. |
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| Tony's application to 17 fairway. |
One experiment we are going to try this year is to see what happens if the turf is left to fend for itself during the winter. The picture above shows a sheet of plywood lying on two fairway, we placed it there before Tony made his application to the turf. We marked the area and will compare it to the rest of the fairway next spring.
Another aspect of closing the course is aerification using solid tines. On the fairways, the aeration machine, a Toro 660, is mounted on the tractor by three point hitch. The tines are 3/4 inch thick stainless steel rod that are cut down to 6 inches and will penetrate about five inches into the soil. The rough ground here at Oakfield wears them down fairly quickly but we usually get two to three areifications to all the fairways before they are too short to be of use. The above picture also shows the pattern the machine leaves. Below is a golf pencil inserted in the hole for reference.
We also aerate the greens with solid tines, but much smaller versions mounted on the Toro 648 walk behind aerator. Here's the same pencil in a green aerification hole on 16 green.
In either case the surface is opened up and allows water to flows from the surface and into the soil. This helps in reducing ice injury in the spring. If water is left on the surface it turns to ice and can suffocate the plant. The aeration also increase gas exchange and helps to reduce compaction.
Tarping follows the aeration and fungicide application. As our experience grows with each year of tarping our program becomes more refined. To see an article we wrote in 2010 on tarping click here. In the first year we would double tarp numbers 16, 8, 12, 13 and 5, however we have discovered that only number 13 really needs the expense of a double tarp. Being exposed to the wind directly from Fish lake the green needs more protection from desiccation or drying out. While we still haven't had a real winter to test the validity of the tarps, they have proven to be of benefit in the milder conditions of the last few winters. The benifit, which can be expensive (one tarp is about $1500), is certainly visible in the spring conditions, which leads us to quicker establishment of better playing surfaces and faster winter recovery. Installation of the tarps takes about 3 days with five staff. It can be difficult and is very labour intensive ...perhaps that's why they groan when ever I mention the tarps. We use over 700 bags of sand, more than 3000 staples to hold down 138,000 square feet of tarp, all of which must be installed by hand.
Here's a sped up video of us tarping number five green.
Click here
As our program expands we are using some of the older tarps left from the construction to experiment with other parts of the golf course. One such experiment is to see the effects of a tarp preventing washing out in the traps. We placed tarps over the edges of numbers fourteen, nine and eight green side traps where the washouts are always the worst in the spring. Below are pictures of the set up. Stay tuned to see the results
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| Before tarp. |
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| After tarp. |
I will continue to add posts through the winter on our progress and keep the membership updated. If you have any ideas or questions please feel free to contact us, we are always happy to see interaction with the our great membership. Finally I would like to thank our staff for another great year of effort and hard work, with out them our golf course would not be what it is. Thanks to all and have a great winter!
Adam:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the updates:
Doug McNeil