Greens Update

We are now a week removed from our fall aeration of greens tees and approaches.  We are happy with the progress made to this point.  Greens were verticut on Tuesday to move some sand around and despite a little mess left after the following morning mowing, it worked out great.  We are cutting a great deal of grass when we mow, so we will continue with daily mowing and rolling to get them back under control.  Green speeds are not what they typically are, but that is completely normal and expected.  Speed will come back with time as long as we can keep the roller going. 

Currently our bentgrass is growing at an accelerated rate because of ideal growing conditions and higher than normal fertility levels.  Prior to aeration we give a little extra shot of fertilizer to help our greens endure the stress aeration can cause.  They are certainly not as smooth as they were prior to aeration, but we are confident that within another week, it will be hard to tell that they were aerated at all.  Aeration is and should always be a compromise for golfers and turf staff alike.  We would love to be more aggressive with aeration, but we understand that the sooner we get these areas back into shape, the sooner we can offer the best possible experience to our guests.  At the same time, without aeration at all, the long term health and playability of our green, tees and approaches would be compromised.  Look for fairway aeration to start in the next week or so, and check back for more information to come.          

A group effort

About a month ago, we lost the majority of our seasonal staff to college, high school, and sleeping in.  Since their departure we have had a very hard time keeping up with our daily maintenance, not to a point of disrepair, but not to the standards that we have as an organization.  Going along with the mantra of "Power in Numbers" we will be doubling up at the Heritage next Monday morning to mow out the place and check off detail work more efficiently and timely.  With our staffs combined we can accomplish much more together than seperately at our respective courses.  At this point it is just a trial, but if it proves successful we will likely use it primarily in the shoulder season, when we are understaffed despite rapid turfgrass growth.

Aeration Update

The course reopened after only a day and a half closure yesterday at noon.  We were able to complete aeration of greens, tees and approaches less than a dozen people and in about half the time.  Ordinarily we close at 2pm the Sunday prior to aeration week and reopen the following Wednesday.  This year we were able to bust out aeration, cleanup, topdressing and dragging all in a day and a half.  We encoutered some challenges with our Soil Reliever (deep-tine machine) when we attempted to fit 16" tines for the first time.  After half a day of struggles we opted to go back to our 12" tines which as usual worked flawlessly.  Jim did a fantastic job keeping everyone moving and making adjustments and repairs very quickly.  To my knowledge there weren't any major equipment problems, a testament to Jims preventative maintenance.   

Getting greens back into shape will be our main focus in the coming week or so.  We will try for a mow on Sunday and will likely roll on days when we don't mow.  Tees and Approaches cleaned up very nicely and should get a trim over the weekend at some point.  All of these areas are extremely soft and will be for the near future, so be careful with clubs, carts and footsteps as they can be extra damaging under current condions.  We will continue dragging and rolling to move sand around and slowly firm up all playing surfaces.  The importance of aeration cannot be overstated, as much as it is a nuisance to our guests for a week, it is exponetionally important to providing excellent playing conditions the other 51 weeks of the year.  Bare with us and if the weather cooperates we should be back in shape in no time flat.  A big thanks to our staff and the Heritage staff that spent the last couple days helping us out with aeration.  We enjoy having them over and couldn't do all of this in such a short time without them.      

Tea Time

Amazingly we have blogged for almost a season now and we haven't yet discussed our compost tea efforts in the past couple years.  We have incorporated more and more organic fertilizer sources in the past 3 years and after a little bit of research and curiosity we decided to start brewing our own compost tea.  There are a many who say there are few if any benefits to using compost tea, however there is an equal number of people who wholeheartedly stand behind it as an invaluable tool in their agronomic programs.

At the risk of over generalizing, the primary motivation with compost tea is to increase microbial populations in the soil.  Some are attempting to increase fungal based microbes in to the soil to combat destructive turf diseases and lessen reliance on fungicides to fight them off.  Others are more geared towards a bacteria based microbe that can fix nutrients in the soil and lessen a dependence on synthetic fertilizer sources.  We would be in the latter group of tea brewers.

We just so happened to have an old RGF water recycling system that was installed (almost completely) when the course was built.  The intent was to recycle the water used to wash equipment off, however it was never installed correctly and parts quickly became extinct for this particular machine and it has sat inoperable for many years.  We took this as perfect opportunity to free up storage space and make use of something we already have! 

Anyways, we modified it, rebuilt an old aerator pump from one of our lakes and vuola, we have a 250 gallon compost tea brewer.  While it is a little different than most brewers you will find for sale, and louder than a 747 taking off, it certainly does the job.

For no more than $100 we modified our water tank trailer into a compost tea sprayer, which we still use in the winter for spot watering.  The next step, which we are still working on, was to work out our recipe.  Based on what we know and have read, this year we purchased 250 lbs of vermicompost from Full Circle Compost in Nevada.

They actually make a variety of different composts blended with a ton of different products and additives for the very purpose of brewing compost tea.  Our particular blend contains vermicompost, seaweed, hydrolyzed fish, humates, mycorrhizal fungi, and paramagnetic rock dust.  We are very pleased with our progress this year and hope to dial in our recipe further next year. 

We failed miserably at producing our own vermicompost this spring, utilizing food scraps from the Grill at Legacy Ridge (no meat or dairy!), but we will give it another try this winter and see what we can come up with.  If you have any questions about our tea program, please feel free to ask our staff members.

Compost is here

A sure sign that aeration is upon us, 120 yds of compost arrived today and will be a mainstay in our parking lot until aeration is completed.  In the past we have ordered 200yds, but with a tight budget for the remainder of the year, we cut our rate slightly to save a little money.  We have discussed before some of the benefits we hope to realize in amending our soil with compost, but there is no better time than after we pull aeration cores.  Just like we did in the spring after the cleanup of cores is completed we will topdress approaches and tees with a heavy dose of sand.  Depending on weather and timing, we will likely topdress tees and approaches in conjuction with fairways.

The compost serves two main purposes, though we are treating it in this case as a fertilizer source and secondarily as a soil amendment.  While the two go hand in hand, we don't use nearly the amount of compost that we do when topdressing sand to fill aeration holes.  Our concern with using compost alone as an ammendment in the case of approaches and tees is that it lacks porosity and in the profile could eventually lead to a less firm playing surface.  Obviously we have similar concerns about fairways, at the moment we feel the benefits outweigh our concerns in this case.

An ideal solution might be to blend a topdressing sand with the high quality compost we purchase, but to this point we are unable to buy the large quantity of sand neccesary and settle instead on compost alone.  We supplement with sand topdressing in isolated areas, primarily swales and drainage areas in certain fairways to aide in water percolation.

On a side note, the compost this fall is easily the product we have received to date.  A new screen had to be purchased by our supplier to reach our specs, but in our opinion it was well worth it.  It should drag in with little or no mess left behind, which is great for everyone.

Tee it Forward

The stakes you have likely been noticing out on the course this summer are marking the possible location of some new tee boxes.  As we mentioned a few months ago, we are in the planning stage of adding or enlarging 10 tee boxes around the course this fall.  Our hope is that more teeing options will give the less-experienced player a shorter scorecard to navigate at our facility.  This in turn should equate to a more enjoyable experience and a quicker pace of play for all golfers. 

As a daily-fee facility we have to accommodate golfers at both ends of the golf spectrum and for many novice players Legacy, like many modern courses, is too long and tight.  So adding forward tee boxes allows us to set the course up more difficult for tournaments as we always have, while setting the white and red tees up at much shorter yardage to accommodate players who don't hit tee shots 300 yards.  The majority of golfers play a tee box beyond their ability primarily because of ego.  This can easily lead to slow play, and often times a less than enjoyable round of golf.  We encourage players to use the guidelines displayed on the Tee it Forward website when selecting a tee box.  It is mainly based on Driver distance, but a golf handicap is another method commonly used.   

As an added bonus we have more tees boxes to give our regulars a new look on holes they have played many times, offering a completely unique series of shots.  We look forward to illustrating our process in building these tees, but for now here is another link if you would like more information about the "Play Golf America" movement.