Quite a stretch

That was one of the most brutal stretches of weather we have all seen here on MV. Dog days for sure. I have heard more times than I can remember "we never needed air conditioning on MV" or "we only get a few days of really hot weather". That stretch broke all time records for Providence, RI. It was unbearably humid for roughly 6 weeks straight. We may not have had peak high temps but it was really hot and just unpleasant for man, or beast and especially cool season turf. The disease pressure was through the roof and we saw active fungus many times. The picture below shows the tee which is sprayed conventionally holding up nicely. The rough at the beginning of the fairway which gets sprayed with the Bioject (natural bacteria that we brew and spray instead of synthetic fungicides) also doing well. And in between a swath of unprotected rough that looks as if it has an inch of snow on it. The white mycelium of the Dollar Spot fungus means it is active and spreading. After the mycelium goes away it leaves a bleached lesion on the leaf. if enough damage is done the grass will take on a tan hue. hopefully that will be the end of that weather and we can continue into cooler nights and the turf can begin to recover from all the damage. Maybe we can all turn off our air conditioners too.

active disease

Disease lesions

Speaking of damage. Our salt water intrusion was high again this summer and it shows by how slimy the soils are. Think of a pile of ice melt spilled on the driveway or the salt in your shaker. The salt builds up and then pulls moisture out of the air keeping the surface moist and soft. This means it is easier to take a divot and in some areas the turf will simply peel up from any aggressive cart traffic. Please use caution with carts and try to avoid excessive turning and driving around until we can flush the salts from the surface. I will apply a gypsum application which will help with the flush.

Small Tire skid

Large Tire skid

cart damage 8 fairway

The fairways may be soft making it easy to take divots. I can handle a few extra divots there. What tests my patience at the end of a tough summer is divots on greens. There is simply no reason to take a divot on a green. We had three in about a weeks time. Same person? There is no way of knowing who the culprit is unless someone tells us. Obviously they suck at putting and have anger management issues or simply have no clue how to play the game. I often say the etiquette of the game is gone. These episodes only reinforce that thinking. If you play with someone who does this please tell them how bad it is and let us know who they are so we can reinforce the message.

divot 5 green

divot 6 green

With the change to our schedule moving the club championship to september we lose the ability to do our normal greens aerification the day after Labor Day. We will however try to do a needle tine aerification a couple of times this fall. We may even vertical mow and topdress the greens so keep an eye on the schedule for some minor disruptions to the tee sheet over the next few weeks.

Pretty clouds

The great charcoal scare

I made a change in the way I applied our crabgrass preventative this year. I often make subtle changes to the programs to see if we can improve costs, efficiency, or simply the course in general. It seemed to be a home run as it was very efficient, easy to do and allowed me to get into areas that I was unable to using the traditional method. The nuts and bolts are instead of using the booms on the sprayer I used the boom less nozzles on the back. This allowed me to get in close to the trees along the range and one, a spot I was unable to using the booms. About two weeks ago I started noticing these speckles on a few collars and greens.

Nursery

5 green?

These were in odd places and hard to see during the day in full day light. They were not any disease I recognized and had a distinct pattern to them. I worked with one of my support staff and confirmed my suspicion that these were an over spray from the crabgrass application and essentially a chemical burn. The solution was to apply activated charcoal. These speckles are not to be confused with Dollar Spot which is a fungus that causes lesions in the turf like the picture below.

Dollar spot lesions

The application of the charcoal caused quite a stir since it was obvious something had been applied or spilled. I figured it might make a good post to explain why we turned some sections of the course black. After watering in with fresh water the color has subsided some and maybe the predicted rain will finish the job. If it works it should break down that heavy rate of crabgrass preventative and the turf will recover on its own.

9 green

Getting there and Weather Underground

Welcome to Summer. The holiday weekend is upon us and the weather has turned a bit warmer. The course appears to be getting into shape and starting to look as good as it has played. The construction is almost behind us with the last of the woods on 3 being seeded. Speaking about 3 the sod has been lowered so at least you can find your ball and pull it out to the approach or nearest point of relief. That is easier to say than do in some parts of the hole with the entire right side having been seeded. Do the best you can. If it looks like a seeded area move over. Murph found a baby foul running around the 8th hole. A long way from any water.

Quack

I swapped our moisture meter with a colleague who had one that measured salinity which ours did not. This was not a feature he needed and we sure do so it was a win-win for both of us. I tested it out this week on a fertilizer spill on the first hole. When testing greens the salinity was in the .6 range. This spill area was 1.2 all the way up to 8.55. As you can see synthetic fertilizers can have a high salt index and if concentrated will kill grass. It was a good lesson on how to use the new meter.
I flushed that area today with some gypsum and will replant when the meter shows acceptable levels.

Got Salt?

The pictures below cannot do justice to the colors in the high rough these days. The red top mixed in with the purple fescue seed heads is stunning.

Red Top in tall rough

#3 is coming along and this warmer weather will only help. We will have to install another sprinkler to hit the lower half of the new sod. Hopefully this week.

lowering sod height

My last post was a plea for people to help us improve the course by following the directional signs and ropes and stay off newly seeded and sodded areas. I also asked people to keep their pull carts off the collars of the greens. The pictures below show people inside the ropes and pull cart tracks right up the right collar on three and on new seeded area to the left of the 3rd approach bunker. Obviously these people are not reading this blog or getting the message.

Not getting much help......

On a tip in the TurfNet forum from a Superintendent in Illinois, Chuck Barber St Charles CC, I purchased an inexpensive weather station. It is WiFi and connected to the Weather Underground site. Check it out HERE Bookmark the site for all your Mink Meadows weather interests.

Science project - Poa Seed head Suppression

There have been some changes in the way we use a plant health product called Proxy. Most of our products come out of the Agriculture industry. This product is used as a growth regulator and specifically to suppress annual bluegrass seed head production. This is very important on putting greens since the production of these seed heads make the greens bumpy for weeks. I have been making two applications in the Spring for years. The change has been to apply one application in the late Fall. I decided to try this with our last spray of the season. When it came time to spray the nursery I decided to skip a few spots to test whether the late season application made a difference. I add a dye to the last spray of the season to keep the greens darker for the Winter. This helps absorb sunlight and heat things up over the off-season. It also made it obvious where we had skipped this last spray.

Early Spring

After late March application 

Early Spring non-sprayed plot

Different angle of the non-sprayed plot above after second spray

By again skipping various areas we have a full blown trial going on. With check plots that have neither the November nor March applications "CK", Spring only "SO", Fall only "FO", and Both "B". In university research trials there are usually triplicates, exact size plots and many other strict protocols which I may not have followed but it is still a neat thing to see.  

In the Spring application I added iron or Ferrous Sulfate (FeSo4) to again add a little color. This will not last as long as a dye so I have more control of the color of the greens. I skipped a section on most of the greens as a test in addition to the nursery. These skips would then all be Fall only plots. Iron really works to turn grass green as you can see in the skips on 2 and 3 greens pictured here.

Eventually we should see patches of white seed heads. Or at least more seed heads in these areas, but who knows? That is why we do these tests to see how the products we use work here on this property.

And so it begins

First mowing # 5 Green

Decided to start you off with a picture right out of the gate. I mowed greens Tuesday morning. We had a frost the next morning which is not what I anticipated but we did not see anything change and they continued to green up more every day since. I usually try to schedule the first mow when it will rain overnight to help diminish the shock. Will spread a lime application which seems to be an annual thing now as we continue to try and balance our soils. The addition of salt water reeks havoc with the chemistry in the soil and requires careful attention and extra inputs such as high calcium lime and gypsum to help bring them back to balance.

Will spreading lime on # 2

Speaking of saltwater intrusion in our well and havoc. We tried to fire up the pump station and do our normal preventative maintenance and flow meter calibration (state requirement) on Wednesday only to find a catastrophic failure. Instead of the 400 gpm (gallons per minute) or a reasonable facsimile we could only muster about 30 gpm. This was not shocking but certainly not expected or welcome. The discussions have begun and we are researching what are options are to proceed. The preliminary ones include bringing our old 6" well, drilled in the 60's and abandoned in 97 when we drilled the current one, back into service. We may have to chemically clean our existing well and try to use sparingly to augment the 6" (assuming the pump itself still works). We do have a 4" well that we use to maintain line pressure and small volume watering so that may play a bigger role also. All conjecture at this point and very early in the process. We always have the option of buying all of our water and using the town booster pump. Not my first choice for many reasons. This would be why you turn your system on as early as possible so you have time to deal with any problems. I will keep you posted as things progress. My hope is that you will not even notice any changes as my efforts to water deep and infrequently, begun in earnest last season on fairways at least, will begin again with a renewed vigilance. The process has been in place for a few seasons on greens and worked extremely well. We ran into a few localized dry areas on fairways last season and so for this year we have stepped up our use of wetting agents to overcome this in the future. With Spring rains a normal occurrence it is not as immediate an issue as it would be if in the middle of our summer dry period but the solutions are not overnight ones so we need to get right on this to avoid hassles come Summer. In the meantime we still have many tasks to wrap up getting the course back into shape and also fill the entire irrigation system to see if it survived the Winter without issue.

Pump house - not a pretty site in color or velocity

porch deck after staining

Hopefully we get a few nice days to finish the clubhouse deck staining next week. There is rain predicted early in the week but if you have read this far you know I will not complain about that with our current pump/well issues. We continue to play catch up cleaning the course after the blizzard last week and all the debris it left behind. The Osprey's are back, as well as the pinkletink frogs and I even saw the willows in bloom. All a sure sign that brighter days lie ahead.

willow

our mascot since the 70's when the pole was put up. one of the first on the island

Hurry up and Wait

I posted a bit on the storm as it happened earlier this week. I survived my frustrations of a march blizzard by going to the beach three times during the storm and taking pictures and videos and then blogging and tweeting them. Caught a great sunset but missed the best timing. I went too early and forgot my gloves so my hands were frozen after 20 minutes and I became impatient. Dealing with the course however requires all the patience I can muster at this point. It was perfectly clean except for a few wood lines and the expectation is that it is a twiggy mess. Reality as the snow slowly melts and we can drive out there is that it could have been a lot worse. "amazing how clean it is" I think is how Will phrased it to Chris. No real tree damage and no major limbs just a bunch of small twigs and even they stayed fairly concentrated. So now the question becomes when will be able to get it cleaned up? We are losing snow today but it is still out there and the forecast is for rain off and on and heavy at times for the next several days. The plan is to open with temporaries tomorrow and begin the cleanup.

Range tee which actually has a cover on it

deck chair before

deck chairs after

Chris continued the work on the aluminum deck furniture from the clubhouse. He is painting inside the pump house now while we wait for the snow to melt. Fred Pekari arrived back on the island this week so it must be Spring. I went to the MVC meeting last night where they voted in the DCPC for fertilizer use on Martha's Vineyard. I tried to hang in the shadows but was asked a pointed question about how the new regulations would impact golf courses. So if you have cable and enjoy the show which is the MVC you will get a glimpse of me on TV. I will update more on the regulations in another post.

 sunset after the blizzard

Weekly update and Presidential visit

Another week has passed and my wish is coming true. August sure seems to be flying by for me anyway. The member guest without a date or a visit from President Obama finally happened on Thursday, sorry ladies day, and by all accounts was a success. I call it that because I personally want the course to be as good as it can be for the visit. Obviously I want it to be as good as it can every day but when this is what a bunker looks like at the end of the day it requires last minute attention for a special course mid day.

2 bunker normal morning condition

We bumped up some of our normal mowing to avoid scheduling disasters and get the course as spiffy as we can. We only mow greens on weekends so Fridays and Mondays are big mow days for everything else which is a lot of acreage. Normally we mow rough Tuesdays and Thursdays. Schedules are made based on crew size, budgets and growth rate. Remember this is not a TV event, we do not get volunteers or extra equipment or work at night. On our regular schedule the rough by Tuesday morning it is getting long so if we had a visit on Tuesday morning and had to skip, it would be even longer by days end. The goal is to have an enjoyable course not a tricked up test for Professionals. Also we would then leave clippings everywhere and have to blow them adding work etc. 

Obama, Fred, Ellen, Chet, me

The thought process is this: If he came early Monday it would have been hectic since we were trying to get ahead, but we would be in good shape for Monday afternoon and be ahead of the game if an early Tuesday visit. I have a regularly scheduled visit with a vendor mid-week so make sure his name is on the list for end of the road security. Touch base with said vendor as does Mike from Farm Neck and everyone prays this won't become a disaster. As each day comes everybody is asking when & if he is coming, anticipating, excited, talking about what he is doing etc (see previous post). And as each day comes and no visit the frustration mounts and the schedule is completely out of whack. We skipped mowing fairways Wednesday since we applied our fertilizer application so that freed up some time so we re-cut the green surrounds. I changed cups and put in freshly painted ones in anticipation, today's the day right? No visit. By Thursday you are fed up and just go about your day and say we will figure it out as it comes. I thought about rolling greens but decided I could be more productive doing other things. I wash our utility carts because the Secret Service uses them and quite frankly they are filthy. We mow greens, rake bunkers, and mow rough as normal which is to say backwards so as to not chase golfers around the course. I get the call at 8:30 that he is coming at 11:00. Well damn that is not a lot of time to do anything. The timing of Otis mowing rough will put him right in harms way. We already had our issues with him mowing in front of the show a few years ago and let's just say he was just being himself and it was not appreciated. As much as we try to keep everyday golfers out of the fescue with carts, when the guys with guns show up and it is their job to protect POTUS they are going to drive wherever they want period. Otis had/has issues with that so we just make sure he is off the course. Fred is arriving and can go forward and stay ahead of the show doing green and tee surrounds. I will head out and change cups and tee markers and put the wire flags marking the irrigation snap valves at every green. Usually we mow greens right in front to clean up the foot scuffers and make a nice surface. Joe says not necessary and I decide we can only do so much with short notice. 

After meet/greet with Joe, Georgie, Bill

Normal procedure is to set up the course easy. Cannot have the President 4 putting some of our classic "favorite" positions. But as I am changing them my priority is use the brand new flags I have left in stock and find the cleanest spot on the green and tee. Easier said than done. Flag inventory is 3 red 4 white 3 blue. There are not three easy red pins on this course and some are down right torture. Now I will quantify this. Kevin Cleary our former assistant used to put out a lot of red flags on ladies day and say "they love them, think they are easy". So sure enough as I am sneaking onto the greens as the ladies are playing they are joking that I am making the pins easy even when I put it on the front of 4 and again on 8. I decided there were no houses on 4 so if he was going to have a tough hole there would not be any witnesses, you are welcome Mr. President I had your six. The reason to wait on cup changing is our greens are so small if we change them every day after a week you cannot find a spot without an old cup or a ball mark. I won't even talk about a clean spot on tees. On 8 I explained to another group of ladies that red pins may be easy to get to from 30 yards but get much harder from 180 or better. Eye opener for both of us. I wonder if the new tees have made the red pins harder for some ladies who are now able to reach in 2? 

Grabbing some high ground on my deck

Anyway I raced to 9 and tossed him a softball pin for the photo op and spectators on porch. Hoping at this point I have time to shower and shave. As I drive to shop to unload there are agents everywhere, it is go time. I get way laid by a few questions, lose the dog for a few, notice the bomb sniffing Shepard and panic. Ask an agent if I have time for a shower and he says "depends how long you take to shower" damn. Needless to say I do not wait for the warm water to arrive before jumping under and take my fastest ever. Race down to porch to greet a few people ask if I am bleeding anywhere, surprised that I am not, get a few wardrobe adjustments and then swept away to deal with one of the entrances and posting security. I was fortunate to ride point with an agent from Boston in front of the President, a first for me. It was amazing how the people just appear from everywhere and the response that is required to secure it all. Swear I saw gray hair appearing on Dan's head. I mis-behaved a bit and took some covert pictures and tweeted them out to my followers and had a few conversations going as we drove all over the place. Only had one paparazzi with a huge camera on 7 tee. He came in from Tashmoo and we were both happy to be able to push him back into the woods. The agents were cordial to all spectators and I was really taken to see the sniper guys pictured above approach some young children and hand out pins. Said to Dan "interesting you have the most heavily armored guys doing the good will" he responded "it works" and he was right it made them a lot less scary. Wonder if they used the same tactics with Bert who was left on my deck but was inside when I arrived and found them on the deck instead. I did ask permission to take that photo by the way. 

So just another normal week at the Mink in August. Plans were finalized for a contractor to come in and slice seed fairways 9/3. This is the day after Labor Day and we were already scheduled to have a contractor deep tine aerify our greens. We have decided to close the course entirely so these guys can get their work done in an efficient manner. We normally go to temp greens on aerifying day anyway so play is greatly reduced. I sent an email to our tree guy to plan for stump grinding that day also if he does not come in before hand. Might as well make it a party. I appreciate your cooperation and trust me no one wants to get the fairways back into top shape more than me but it is impossible to get anything done with the volume of play we have right now so this was a great option. There will be more on this in the future.

Marching on and a positive note to all this rain

The calendar continues to roll on. It was freezing inside this morning so I closed the windows. Middle of June and it feels like March. I imagine soon we will be complaining about the heat. We certainly have not had a chance to acclimate to warmer weather. The island dodged most of the heavy rain this week. We are still soggy and closing to carts is forcing people to walk. This could be a good thing. Sort of a Mink Meadows exercise plan. To say it is getting depressing would not do it justice. But the staff is trying to muddle through and keep morale up. Our focus this week besides pumping puddles and doing regular mowing was to clean up a couple of areas around the course. We also spiked greens for the first time and top dressed them twice. The rain is washing in the top dressing nicely so there are positives to all this rain.

Native areas. picture for twitter post

Murph cleaning up left side of nine fwy

Ken Braun and his dad starting up Bioject

Chris spiking green

Will planting trees

new tree in border between range and 1 fwys

graduation week

 The removal of a few dead trees along side of one gave us the opportunity to remove some trees from Otis's house and plant them in their place. Hopefully they fair better than their predecessors. The Bioject was fired up and I began applying the bacteria to fairways to suppress  the dollar spot fungus. This will be our 16th year using this system instead of synthetic fungicides.
Some good reading about proper divot taking on practice tees can be seen HERE

Challenges

I feel stupid and uninspired writing about the weather every week but if you are on MV and attempting to play golf daily you will appreciate my frustrations. Overall we are in a cool wet pattern this season. This will slow growth which can be a good thing since it is hard to mow grass in the rain. Any traffic on water logged soils is bad as you can create ruts, compact the soil, tear the turf etc. Extreme wetness can also foster many turf pathogens if the grass never gets a chance to dry. Heavy rain followed by dry windy conditions is ideal. Cloudy misty for several days not so much. We lost Monday due to rain (1.3"), so we had to try and play catch up Tuesday on all of our mowing. Of course we had other plans already scheduled for Tuesday such as fertilizing fairways, and removal of a couple of dead trees. This is where the art part of what we do comes into play. We mow on a regular schedule when we can because that is necessary for consistent and healthy turf. Your fertility level has a major impact on growth rate so managing that part effects other parts. The delay in our fairway application was a blessing. Their slow growth means we can go long stretches and not have to bail hay when we do mow them. The fundamental rule is referred to as "thirds". You never want to take more than a third of the leaf off at a time. For example if you mow at 1" when the turf reaches 1.3" you should be mowing. I tell people if you mow without collecting clippings and you are making a mess and have to clean up the clippings than you are not mowing often enough. There is a caveat that timely mowing can be messy if done while the turf is wet so this really is for a dry cut. so what does that mean for a golf course? Greens-daily, tees approaches and fairways- three times a week, rough-twice a week. That is a lot of area to mow often. It is a major part of what we spend our time on and why the perception of being simply grass cutters is rampant. The purpose of this and most turf blogs is to highlight and explain all the facets of what it takes to maintain a golf course and if you read this often you will lose that perception and understand how complex the job really is.

Santa came early with a new bag of tennis balls for Bert

why we aerify and fill holes: sand channels

sprayer issues. had to dump load, clean sprayer and pump load back into tank

Murph & Chris Sassafras on lawn

oak on 8 had its issues

Island Timber at work dropping tree

first hydrangea bloom

Rosa Ragosa