Tissue tests and a familiar sight...

Trey Anderson, Hickory Ridge Golf Course, Carbondale, IL:

"Testing the tissue of a freshly mowed putting green lets us see exactly what the plant is taking up. Because of chemical differences in the soil, what may show up in a soil test is not always available for plant uptake. Environmental stresses can also alter what nutrition the plant needs and uses. One of a Golf Course Superintendents jobs is analyzing this data and and picking products to implement the annual fertilization plan with."

Growing bent grass on putting greens involves very critical water management in the heat of the season. As great as computerized irrigation is, it doesn't know where the greens are already too wet and which spots are dry. This is where hand watering comes in. At HRGC, this is a pretty normal sight. The assistant superintendent and a SIUC turf intern take full advantage of two quick couplers one early morning."

Visit Trey's blog at hrgcturf.blogspot.com

Hydraulic Oil Leaks

Steve Cook, CGCS MG, Oakland Hills Country Club, Bloomfield Hills, MI:

"We have been plagued this year by hydraulic leaks. Yesterday was the sixth time this summer that a hydraulic line has blown on a piece of equipment. Each winter we thoroughly inspect every hydraulic hose but that's no guarantee against failure. Perhaps with the heat and stress on the equipment, this year is our year of bad luck. We'll continue to check equipment and guard against any more hot oil on fine turf.

The area shown in the photo will be stripped and sodded this week."

Visit Steve's blog at ohccturf.blogspot.com.

Heat and drought end with wind and rain...

David Brandenburg, Rolling Meadows Golf Course, Fond du Lac, WI:

"Wow, it has been over a month since I last posted but in reality not much had changed until now. Dry, dry, dry was the normal condition for the golf course. We went 41 days with only .4" of rain here on the south side of Fond du Lac with rain all around us. That ended early Thursday July 26th when we received 2.4" followed by .4" that afternoon and another shower Friday morning.

 The rain was welcome as all of our ponds were down and the inefficiency of the irrigation system could really be seen with as many wet areas as dry areas. We had invested/wasted countless man hours in dragging hoses and hand watering over the past two months to keep key areas alive if not green.

Most un-irrigated places on the golf course are just dormant and will quickly green up although there are some areas that are dead and will need reseeding. We use a infrared thermometer to monitor surface temperatures of the turf to help gauge what time to syringe the turf with a mist of water to cool it down on hot days.

Cart traffic has a negative impact on turf under heat / moisture stress in the afternoon.

Cart traffic during the drought no doubt made things worse as what would normally be a slight wear areas became paths of dead turf. Also green turf that is under heat / moisture stress is susceptible to damage from cart traffic. The picture above shows a fairway that had traffic at just the wrong time and how the turf is damaged by the may wheels that go over it each day.

The negative of the rain is the fairways are a bit wet in places after weeks of watering tends to over-water some spots in a effort to get enough water to other places to keep them alive. But the sunshine should bring things back to normal quickly this weekend."

Visit David's blog at rmgc-maint.blogspot.com.

Renovation from A1/A4 to Champion Bermudagrass...

Steven Harris, CGCS, Brier Creek Country Club, Raleigh, NC:

"Tuesday, June 12: And the Renovation Starts Now... Yesterday we began the process of changing our A1/A4 bentgrass greens to Champion Ultradwarf bermudagrass. This week we will be spot spraying Round-Up on all of the 419 bermudagrass contamination throughout the greens. We will also be spraying a ring around the greens to create a crisp, defined edge that we will then use as the guide for sprigging the Champion in two weeks.

The bermudagrass contamination must be sprayed at least twice to ensure that it is all killed. Once we switch to Champion it is almost impossible to remove any non-Champion contamination.

The plywood is used to create a crisp edge and not overspray into the collars.

In a couple of days you will begin to notice brown patches where we have sprayed out the contamination and most notably, a brownish ring around all of the greens where we have re-defined the edge.

Monday, June 18th: This morning we began the process of spraying the greens with Round-Up to remove the existing bentgrass and get a second spray on the 419 bermudagrass contamination and edges. As many of you who played late last week and over the weekend have already seen, the Round-Up is working. There is a very pronounced dead ring around all of the greens (below left) and large spots in the centers of the greens that have died.

The entire green surface was sprayed this morning to make way for the Champion bermudagrass. Over the next several days you will see the greens gradually turn brown. Due to widespread bermudagrass contamination, the entire practice putting green was sprayed last week. It is now almost entirely brown. This is what the greens will begin to look like.

Sunday, June 24: Today is the last day of play on the old bentgrass putting greens here at Brier Creek. Tomorrow we will be closing the greens down for 8 weeks to renovate them to Champion bermudagrass. This grass will perform significantly better through the summer heat than the bentgrass has the past few years.

Last Monday the entire green surfaces were sprayed with a Roundup mixture supplied to us by Champion Turf Farms. By Thursday the greens were certainly showing the effects.

Dedication to the project: Don Smith helps out on the verticutter all day!

Monday, June 25th: Monday morning we began performing the necessary steps to prepare the greens at Brier Creek to be sprigged with Champion bermudagrass. There is a tremendous amount of work that must be completed before the greens are ready to plant so the crew got started first thing Monday morning. We even had a guest on our maintenance team: our General Manager, Don Smith, pulled some skills from years ago and helped us out for the day.

The first step in the preparing the greens is to remove as much dead leaf material from the old bentgrass as possible. This is done by using a verticutter (much like a de-thatching machine you would use on your home yard) set as deep as it could go. We verticut the greens three times then followed with a greensmowers set to 0.105" to scalp whatever was left standing up. We removed quite a bit of material, but we weren't done yet!

We finished the first step at about 5:30 Monday evening. All the greens had been verticut three times and mowed with the walk mower. There was a lot of material gone, but still quite a bit remaining. We decided that the greens needed one more round of verticutting and then followed by a steel drag mat run across them to further stand up the grass. We then mowed one more time with a riding mower that allowed us to set the height even lower (~0.100")

We finished a few more greens Monday and finally called it quits at around 8:30 that night.

A sod cutter provided a crisp edge between the future Champion greens and the 419 surrounds.

Tuesday June 26th: Although we accomplished a lot of work on Monday, there was a significant workload still remaining. The goal for Tuesday was to finish the final verticutting and mowing, sod cut a clean edge around each green, then get all of the greens aerified.

The crew got back to the golf course at 5:30 Tuesday morning. We finished verticutting, dragging and scalping the greens for a final time.

After the verticutting and scalping was finished, we then took a sod cutter and cut a crisp edge around all of the greens. This will help provide a nice, defined edge between the new Champion and the existing 419 bermudagrass.

We aerified aggressively with 5/8" tines on 1" centers.

Working sand across the surface after aerification.

After the edges were cut and the sod was removed, we began aerifying. We aerified with 5/8" tines on 1" centers. This was a very aggressive hole spacing with the idea of removing even more organic material.

We then had to drag the plugs and smooth the surface back out. We blew off the debris from the dead bentgrass and all that was left was sand to work back across the surface.

It was another long day but we finished aerifying and dragging all the greens on Tuesday. We called it a day at 7:30 and prepared for Wednesday."

We'll have more from Brier Creek next week. In a hurry? Visit Steven's blog at briercreekgcmaintenance.blogspot.com.

It takes a team effort...

Jeff Johnson, The Minikahda Club, Minneapolis, MN:

"It takes a dedicated staff to prepare the golf course on a daily basis. Whether its the extensive seasonal and daily planning, setting the mowing units for daily mowing, making sure the back pack blowers are working properly, filling divots, mowing playing surfaces or making sure the gardens have been weeded and flowers deadheaded, it's all important and everyone on the staff has a part in making it happen. We have an outstanding staff this year. From the seasoned veterans down to the rookies with only a few weeks under their belt, they have done a great job this year. We have a long ways to go before the snow flies, so if you see them on the course, be sure to say a little 'thank you'. I know they will appreciate it."

Visit Jeff's blog at minikahdagrounds.blogspot.com.