Course Update

I hope everyone enjoyed last weekends warm weather and I certainly hope spring is just around the corner.  The seasonal maintenance staff is now beginning to ramp back up.  We should be fully staffed by mid May, so I appreciate your patience as we improve areas throughout the course.  Bunkers will soon be edged and today we will be receiving two semi loads of sand to the maintenance facility.

Through the winter we removed some trees around greens to improve air flow, reduce roots encroaching into greens, increase sunlight and improve overall bentgrass health.  The pics below show you the trees removed.


This Austrian Pine was on the back right of #2 green.  Notice
the weak turf in the foreground where roots are causing
the turf to decline.




This Austrian Pine was back left of #2 green.  Hopefully the bentgrass will recover
on the collar and green.

  


This Spruce was behind #7 green.  The rough, collar and green
should begin to recover.





This Spruce was removed from back right of #5 green.  The
roots encroaching into the green have been taking out
turf for a while now.





This Spruce was behind #15 green.





This pine was removed from right side of #1 green.



This winter we also built two divot sand bottle stands.  Hopefully
these will make great additions in improving turf quality.  One
will be placed at the practice facility and the other at #10 tees.



Course update

The last couple of years have given us record heat waves and this year Mother Nature has blessed us with an outstanding fall.  All the fairways and tees have been seeded and are beginning to show great recovery.  Yesterday, greens were seeded in poor areas and will receive another total surface seeding next week.  Practice facility green, chipping green and target areas will be seeded this Monday.  We will continue to seed all these areas until we receive adequate germination.

Aerification on the course is now coming to an end.  We applied DryJect aerification into the greens again this year.  The process involves blasting high pressure water into the green soil and completely back filling with kiln dried sand.  Below is a picture of this process along with a plug showing the sand injected into the green profile.





We are currently aerifying fairways with only four more remaining.  Today we will finish
up #15 and #18, depending on weather tonight, check with the golf shop for the remaining hole
closures.

The fall is also the time of year when we begin laying off the maintenance staff for the winter.  We are currently at six employees and over the next two weeks there will be three remaining for the winter months.  I would like to thank everyone in advance for there patience, as some daily jobs will be delayed.



The bridge from #7 to #8 has now been replaced with new lumber.  Sounds a lot
better too!




We used all the old wood from #7/ #8 bridge to build 8 raised beds for vegetables. 
These vegetables will be used next year by Chef Jesse for Oxmoor dining.  I hope
this will help in reducing some of Jesse's food cost, while also having fresh veggies
for the members.





This is a perfect example of why we need to stay in the rough/ cart path during
extreme heat and droughts.  These are cart tracks that completely killed out
an area of the bentgrass fairway.

Course Update

Holes 2, 4, 5, 15 and 17 have been sprayed with Round-up, per the Spencer Holt
Master Plan, around the outer edges of the fairways.  These areas will soon be
seeded with fescue and next year will be apart of the new 2 "step cut.  This decrease in
bentgrass is approximately 3 acres and throughout the entire season there will be a
reduction of $6000.00-$10,000.00 in the maintenance budget. 



We attempted earlier to seed #4 fairway and had poor germination rates.  We 
attempted again and received 75% germination. With cool nights approaching we will
continue to seed these areas.  Irrigation will continue to run periodically throughout
the day to ensure proper moisture levels for germination.





A walk path has been installed behind #7 green and will soon be seeded along with
more stones adjacent to the cart path.  We will also construct a path leading to the
men's tee on #4 in the fall. 



Some of the brown areas are now showing signs of recovery.  Today, I even noticed a few seedlings germinating on #4 fairway.  The rain water we received on Saturday really helped the bentgrass out.  Though any water is beneficial to plants, rain water is more beneficial because of the nitrogen in the rain droplets.  The atmosphere consists of about 25% oxygen and 75% nitrogen.  The nitrogen in the atmosphere is not available to plants until it converts to nitric acid and then is available for uptake through rain water.  Bored yet?? Ha...high school biology.  Pictured below is some of the bentgrass in recovery.

The picture above displays some of the shoots regenerating through the thatch.




Some areas throughout the course may not show signs of recovery due to trees.
As we all know trees and turf do not grow well together.  Pictured above is #9
fairway and the tree roots competing for water with the turf.  In this case the
tree always wins and causes the turf to die. Many people think that tree roots
only extend to the outer area of the leaves or drip line.  Roots continue to spread
well beyond the drip line, though these roots are not grown for stability of the
tree, they are used to obtain water and nutrients and are known as the feeder roots.
Last year we installed a root barrier at #13 green and it has proven very successful
this year.  Later in the season, we will install a barrier here and at #17
approach to block the tree feeder roots.



Break in weather



Today we partly seeded #4 fairway to see if the pre-emergent is still active in the

soil.  Normally, we time out the pre-emergents to end around September, but
given the past few seasons we reduced the amounts in case we had another
brutal heat wave.  We hope to have germination on #4 by mid next week.
With the cooler temperatures that we are now receiving, we are seeing some
signs of recovery.  By no means will recovery be an overnight success, but will
take up to a month if mother nature cooperates. We will also seed a few collars
and tees over the next couple of days to check their germination percentages.   

  

The city water is now open to recharge the irrigation lake.  We will continue
 to replenish the water supply until we receive adequate rainfall.



The heat is on!!!

 

 The record breaking heat is back and Oxmoors cool-season turfs are showing much
stress.  I sent out an email today to go along with this blog, so if you did not receive it
please email me at mcoy@oxmoorcoutryclub.com.  If you look closely at the picture
above you will see some light purple color golf cart tracks.  The carts put enormous
stress on bentgrass and this is usually a sign of death to come to the turf.
   



As I wrote in the email, majority of the brown areas in the fairways are a result of heat and
NOT mower scalping or disease. 



 These areas are a result of Poa annua dying out due to heat
stresses. Poa is also a cool-season turf and its survival in the
Kentuckiana area is unlikely.