Finally getting caught up!

Finally the weather is co-operating and things seem to be moving in the right direction.  Grass has been mown and then mown again.  The heights of the greens and tees have been lowered.   We held off till everything was really growing good, giving the grass a chance to fill in a bit.  So the greens did slow down a bit in this process.  New pins and flags have been put out, just in time for the nice weather. 

We are nearly caught up on the golf course.  The only part that still needs work is our bunkers.  We have weeded them once and raked them a few times.  Starting this week we will be paying more attention to them.

This little one was spotted by Keegan this morning back on 15.  Not very old by the looks of it.

 

Thanks for reading Kendall

Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain and wait for it........Rain!

 

 

The weather was not exactly what I had hoped for when planning for a maintenance day.  First off the reason for a maintenance day is to try and get very important cultural practices done on the course.  Here is a list of the things that we got done in the two days even with battling almost 2 inches of rain.  This would take our team several days if not weeks to get all of this work done in front of play.  Closing nine a day gives us a chance to get this work done.

Greens were: Mown vertically twice, blown off, top dressed, brushed, and then rolled

 

Derek on the Verti Cut

 

 

Keegan and Corey blowing off the greens

 

 

 

Tees were: Sliced, mown vertically twice and then cut

 

 

Mark Slicing the Tees

 

Fairways were: sliced, mown vertically once

 

Ruth Marking the fairway sprinkler heads and drain covers

 

Keith Slicing the fairways with the aerway

 

Don verti cutting the fairways

 

 

When it is this wet the plan had to change several times but, I am happy with the work we accomplished.  I am very proud of the Turf Team they never cease to amaze me. 

 

Thanks for reading 

 

Kendall  

Slow but sure!

This spring the weather has had more peaks and valleys than one could imagine.  But, slowly the course is greening up and the grass is growing.  Today we cut the greens for the sixth time.  Fairways have been cut twice and vertically cut once.  Tees and collars have also been cut twice.  The third green has been treated a little differently with a few less cuts.  Today we finished charging up the irrigation system. Now with the ability to put water on things, we have begun to put some seed down. 

Here is a bit of a timeline in pictures of the third green

April 2nd

April 8th after a rain

Today April 24th

As you can see it has bounced back quite well.  I am still sticking to my prediction of the first week of May for this green to be open.  

May 5th is my target date to bring back the rest of my staff, including students. This is when the course will be in full swing.  The rest of the tee blocks will be put out at this time.  As well as other things such as the hole locations being moved more often.  We appreciate your patience with us getting the course up and running.  Patience is certainly one of my weaknesses so I know what the avid golfer is going through right now.

Cheers Kendall

Why is the golf course not open yet?

Why is the Golf Course not open yet?

Luckily or unfortunately the decision of opening the golf course comes as one of my duties here at the Parkway.  Even with the beautiful weather this week I still think it was the right decision to stay closed.  The grass has come a long way this week, but it has a long way to go as well.  The reason we have stayed closed is because of the harsh winter/late spring and the damage that has been caused to the greens.  

A month ago when we were still under mounds and mounds of snow, my mind went immediately to how bad the damage would be.   The course is in much better shape than I thought it would be at this time. 

The tees come through the winter very good.  This is to be expected because they are on high ground that is flat.  For the most part they all have good exposure to the sun and they were clear of snow and ice earlier than the greens and fairways. The tees are not the reason we are not open.

The damage on the fairways is very spotty.  It is mostly in areas that are low lying where the ice made its way during various freeze thaw events.  This won’t hold us back from opening it just is not the most visual appealing thing to look at, especially during Masters week.

The greens are the reason why we did not open.  There was damage (winter kill from the ice) on every green, just in varying degrees.  If we were to open last week as many of you were hoping 1, 3, 5, 10, 13, 15 and 17 greens would have been closed and you would have to play temporary pins in the fairways.  Again there was damage on the others greens as well.  All the greens need this time and weather to get a head start on the season and prepare for summer.  If our greens would have wintered the same as the previous 4 years than we would be open right now.  I hope this explains why we did not open.

Now with all that being said, we are planning on opening on Good Friday April the 18^th, this is weather pending.  There seems to be another bout of cold moving through early in the week with a chance of the white stuff.   The 3^rd green will not be open at this time.  We are hoping this green will be playable by the first week of May.

I know it is hard to be patient after a winter like that, but golf season will start very soon at the Parkway.

I will leave you with this some of my employees tease me that I change my mind a lot.  I tell them “I wouldn’t change my mind so much if mother-nature wasn’t constantly changing hers”

Kendall

Spring Update

 

This week has been great for the course.  That being said we are a long ways off from opening.  We have been out for several tours of the property.  Mainly the course is just too wet to get out there and do much of anything.  As well the hard winter has left the course with let’s call them bumps, bruises and some pretty nasty wounds.  This inevitably is going to lead to scarring of certain areas that we will see well into the season.  When we do open the course will have a long ways to go to bounce back from that winter.  That being said we understand everyone’s desire to get out and about as the weather gets nicer.  There has been a steady stream of cars coming in and checking out the property this last week, and even a few people have stopped in to see me. 

If you have come in to the course you may have seen this at the Putting Green.

The putting green certainly has its issues.  (shade, tree roots, foot traffic, Bad drainage)

Here are some other pictures of some Greens. 

Here are some plugs that I took out of 2 green about three weeks ago.  They basically look very similar to the ones below that we brought in on April 1st.  At the time they were in three different stages of hurt.  As you can tell one is doing great and the others have greened up quite nice but have not grown as much.  This is how I believe most of the other areas of the greens will respond.  The brown areas will be slow to wake up.

Here are some plugs that were taken Tuesday April 1^st from three different greens on the back nine.  I tried to pick the worse looking spot on each green.  This picture was taken 53 hours after I brought them inside.  You can already notice bits of green.  This gives me hope for the areas that are pictured above that do not look so hot.

Below is a close up picture.  It is a little blurry but you can see the green coming.

I remain very optimistic that the golf course will bounce back quickly.  

Cheers

Kendall

Winter update #4

This winter update is going to be very positive, in an attempt to bring on spring a little faster.  I just got back in from a 2 hour exploration of the golf course.  It has been very mild all day and I believe we broke the 10 degree mark.  The melt of all this white stuff has finally begun.  There was something in the air today that made you feel like spring is soon to be here.  Even though the weather man is predicting another bout of winter on Wednesday oh, right sorry think positive!

The bad news is we really won’t know how the grass has come through the winter for quite a while yet. The greens have been covered with snow and ice in varying degrees for 70 plus days.  As you know from the previous winter update that is not good for the survival of the grass.  Now the worry is focused more on how things thaw out.  We will have certain freeze thaw over the next couple of weeks and this can lead to a bad scenario. Which in short is not good (Dead Grass).

Okay, so I kept the bad news short.  The good news is that in my travels today I couldn’t find the smell of death anywhere on the property.  I dug down in several spots on the greens, tees, and fairways broke through the ice and everything smelt good.  So I will take this as a positive and hope that the horse shoe that my assistant accuses me of having stuck somewhere on my body gets me through the next couple of weeks. 

I know the avid golfer must  be eager to get out on the course.  Above is a picture of a dog that has been just as eager.  She didn't even want to take the time to sit down for this picture and that was after the 2 hour excursion.

 

Cheers Kendall

Winter Update #3

Currently we are sitting at 50 days since the ice formed on the greens around the December 23^rd mark.  All the articles that I have read in the past week have said after 45 days begin to worry.   So what we are talking about here is the ice cover on the greens.  Some have seen grass die by being covered less than 45 days and some have seen it go closer to 90 days and survived. 

So where does St. Clair Parkway stand with this situation.  Well I have been monitoring the ice weekly since December.  The bad news is I believe there is ice on every green and it is in that crucial time whether it is going to survive or not.  The good news is I believe very little of the greens are covered by ice.  Number 2 green is approximately 20% covered by ice.  Most of the greens on the front 9 are very similar to this.  The back nine is harder to tell, I certainly have not been back there as much as I have been able to observe the front 9.  I would estimate that some of the sheltered greens have ice cover closer to 50%. 

The last couple of weeks I have certainly thought about blowing the snow off of the greens.  But, the weather is just not appropriate for that.  Last night the temperature dropped down to -28 C.  Exposed turf would not like this after being covered by the nice blanket of snow which insulates it from harsh temperatures.  Yesterday I attended a one day conference in Windsor.  One of the presenters told us a story of a winter in the mid-90s.  It was similar to this one and a bunch of Superintendents went out in cleared the snow off there greens anticipating a melt.  The snow melted and the greens cleared.  Then they had another bout of winter but, in the spring the greens were nearly 100% healthy.  Two weeks after that, some other Superintendents went out and cleared off their greens anticipating a melt.  The melt did not happen fully and they were left with a lot of water on their greens.  This water froze and killed the greens.   In the end it is up to mother-nature.  Much like in the summer the cards we are dealt are the cards we got, just play them accordingly and make the best out of it.

 

I have gone out and checked the snow and ice coverage on two green today.  As well I have removed a small plug from under the ice on 2.  It is now in the window of the shop and hopefully it will grow.  I have had the unfortunate experience of smelling dead plugs from greens at a previous golf course that I worked at.  The one I brought in today smelt okay but time will tell.

 

Stay Warm

Kendall        

Second Winter Update

Currently the three day thaw is coming to an end.  There was not enough of a melt to get all the ice and snow off of the greens.  This means I will be watching the weather closely over the next month.  If mother-nature doesn’t lend a helping hand to get rid of the rest of the snow and ice, we will have to take matters into our own hands and try to remove the ice ourselves.  It is a last resort action, so the decision to do it has to be made carefully.

Here are some pictures of the first and second holes.  It shows what we are left with after the mild days and the precipitation that we received.

These are pictures of the 1st and 2nd green, my phone died after that but most of the greens are the same.  Some grass is exposed and then their is some under ice as well.

Cheers Kendall

First Winter Update

I know it has been ages since my last blog.  So here is just a quick touch base on what is happening at the Parkway.  The course closed down quite nicely in the fall.  The weather was awesome in October for golf and turf.  The grass just kept growing right up till the end.  This gave us very little time to do some of the things that we had planned.  We were forced to just maintain the golf course the best we could with little staff that we had.  The last cut on the greens was November 6^th.  Little was done on the course after that with the course actually closing Sunday November 10^th.  That seems like forever ago, I took some down time away from the course.  The Holidays were a whirl wind and some way or another I find myself well into January already.  I haven’t really had time to reflect on 2013, but I know that most of the goals we set for the turf were achieved and I was quite proud of that.  The fun part is sitting back in the next few months and reflecting a bit and trying to improve on things for the upcoming season.

Currently I am a little concerned about the layer of ice that formed on the greens around December 23rd weekend.  The ice storm that most of Southern Ontario got just came as rain for us.  But, it melted down the snow that we had and it formed some ice on the greens.   I would say the greens are approximately 35% covered with ice.  Then we received a significant snow fall and it is due to turn mild again for a three day stretch with some possible rain.  This may add more ice on the greens.  We will see, it is still early on and we will just have to see how mother nature will play this out.  Here is a link to another blog that talks about ice on greens. 

http://onturf.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/ice-on-greens-the-clock-is-ticking/

The snow that we do have is been just blowing around and drifting for the last three days. Hopefully you all had a good Christmas and a happy new year

Cheers Kendall