Beware ‘The slow recovery‘

Hi All,

Just thought I would do an update on what will happens now the rain has started to come down again and boy has is come down.  

It is now true that this last heat wave gave 1976 a run for is its money. I haven’t ever seen a summer like this that’s for sure.

The closest I can remember was the heat wave of 1995 and that was the year I carried out my “work experience” as a Greenkeeper... little did I know it would shape my entire life from that point. 

It’s definitely been a struggle, a struggle to keep greens alive let alone playing areas with no water. Unfortunately those areas gave in weeks ago. These areas fairways, semi rough, roughs and surrounds (where the water doesn’t reach) are now in limbo, not completely dead but not alive either.

The recent rain has given us some colour and the Fescue and Rye grasses have come back to life slowly and especially in the hollows on the likes of the 1st, bottom of 6th, 12 and 14th. The colour isn’t all green is a brownie/ black and green.

The brownie colour  is the the areas that haven’t quite fully died out. These are mainly the Fescues, typical

of links turf these lose colour but hold on to their lead during drought conditions. They are fantastic to play from. 

The green tends to be patch’s of Rye that are more clumpy looking again can be great to play from if even coverage is achieved like our tees but not so much when mixed with the fescues.

Drought damage leaving dead bare areas

The black area areas that have completely died off and these areas can become particularly slippery during wet conditions so please be aware. These tend to be annual meadow grass as it’s a shallow rooting grass species and this years drought was just to much for it to handle. These are normally the first grass species to check out during the summer months. We are lucky at Stoneham because we have mainly Fescues, Bents and Rye fairways with the odd patch of Annual meadow grass. We are slowly hoping to reduce these and some of the Rye (the tall stalky bits you can sometimes see on them) from fairways over time.

Trolley damage in summer as rain wont penetrate the surface

Increasing scarifying using the Terra rake and Scarifiers on the fairway mowers will help this over time. This will also help the battle with Worms but that’s another blog in itself.

Terra Rake being used last year

Now the real work starts... 

There are those people that say ‘grass will come back it always does’ well that’s true to an extent. 

The trouble is what will come back? We have already discussed the different species and how the react to the summer and the issues we have with them. We could do nothing and let our fairways and surrounds fill with Annual Meadow grass but we already know that wont last another hot spell.

For us we are going to try and in courage the grass species we want and the ones that will play great and perform best during all the different climates. The other issue is weeds, these are just as likely to fill the void left behind the drought as much as unwanted grass species. 

So what have we been doing? 

Well to be honest, Maintenance week couldn’t have come at a better time for this. Yes I can hear what you are thinking... yes it does break my heart to smash up the greens just when they are so good but I also know the benefits from doing this and I know this is why they are performing better each year. 

The USGA have done great little video on this here :-
  
http://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/video-hub.html#brightcoveId=5820496652001&pageTitle=Fore%20The%20Golfer%3A%20Golf%20Course%20Aeration%20-%20The%20(W)hole%20Story&playlist=course-care

Long term-  we will need to add drainage like we have on the 13th because I want them to perform like summer greens all year round and to protect us from heavy rain like I want to protect us in the summer with a good Irrigation system but again that’s another blog. 

Back to Maintenance week:- 

15mm solid tines to 3 inches on surrounds to break through the layer

Maintenance week came at just the right time, this allowed us to solid tine the Surrounds to allow water to penetrate through the surface. This will also allow light through to the soil below for new grass plants to come up through the dead thatch layer sitting on the surface. The best way to imagine this is punching holes through wet card board. This will allow the water and light to drain through.

The Aprons - obviously these areas have held on fantastically following the investment into new sprinklers during last winter. These were more efficient and allowed us to get the water where it was required. I think that and the improved fertility program, weekly brushing have improved a lot this year. Last week we hollow tined them to 4 inches depth using 16mm hollow tines at 2 inch spaces. These were then lightly dressed but this will be more aggressive in the coming weeks. Along with a fertiliser to see us through until winter.

This was hard work collecting them by hand for the team but I felt these are key areas I wish to keep improving. Over time I want them to firm up but keep the same level of grass coverage so the react more like greens. Stage 1 was always establishing grass now we are on Stage 2. Firming up by lowering the Thatch or OM levels and sand dressing to improve drainage.

 

High level of OM at the top of the core and clay at the bottom. Adding sand to dilute thatch and firm surfaces

Tees- The tees were deep aerated with 12mm tines to 8 inches. We have done this to help root development and help drainage. We will be hollow coring these in October as part of our end of season renovations. These will be fertilised in the coming weeks.

Greens- Our original plan (after weeks of debate) with greens was to deep hollow core. The reason for the debate was due to the soil analysis coming back showing a marked improvement in OM levels throughout the profile.

Deep Hollow Coring on Putting Green

We have even dropped a bit low in the top 20mm. Something I could have only dreamed of when starting in 2015 and shows how hard we have worked the surfaces to get that down and NO before you ask this doesn’t mean it’s over and no more aeration or hollow coring but what it does mean is that we are now looking further down the soil profile and that hopefully we won’t need to be as aggressive moving forward but that could all change from a wet winter. We will keep checking with our Agronomist and our Soil analysis. 

Our issues are now deeper down the profile and getting our roots to go deeper into the Clay soils below and leave their comfy surroundings of the sand root zone. We felt that we should remove some of the clay material and then fill with sand so the roots would travel down these holes. One of my concerns was the fact we were slightly low on the surface OM levels and no matter how you try you cannot by pass taking some of that out when using hollow tines.

12mm Solids and 15mm solids at different depths

We decided to try the putting green first as this was the one with the slightly highest OM levels in the surface. I think from the minute we started Graham, Levi and Myself knew this wasn’t going to be something we were completely happy about.
It lifted the surface quite badly and left some damage that will take weeks to repair.
The team on clear up also raised concerns about how long it was going to take to clear up following the first hour and half. It was then we decided to go back to one of our other plans. 12mm solids into the clay area at 8 inches followed by a and topdressing and sweep and fill brush to get sand down into the clay.


Once finished we ran the pro core over them with 15mm solids to 4.5 inches and lots of sand again. This was followed by an organic fertiliser another top dressing and brush. This worked fantastically.

 We then ran the Air2g2 over them (the deep tine followed by compressed air to 12 inches).

Organic Fertiliser being applied

The greens were then rolled and cut with our “thirds” units Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  On Monday we then cut with our “seconds” with the plan being up top up the holes once more before moving away from the topdressing of greens until we are back on our “Firsts” or best cutting units for greens and those that played will know you can tell the units being used are not our main ones. We use the older units to get the sand levels down for a couple of reasons. Mainly to save and protect the life of our new ones and secondly cost. It costs a lot of money to get units ground sharp. 

Fairways, Surrounds? 

Wetting agents being applied

The fairways and surrounds had wetting agents applied to them to help the water to penetrate into the soils last week. The soils have gone hydrophobic meaning water just beads off rather than penetrating. We need the soils to have water in so we can start the regeneration process. 

Seed just coming through seeding disc lines

We have also over seeded areas and are starting to see some life coming through from the seeding done in early May which has just sat in the lines waiting for the rain. 

Next we will give them a feed. Then in October we are planning to hollow core all fairways, Aprons, Tees and surrounds again. This is a huge process but this year above others will make this essential work. We will then scarify all these areas and tidy ahead of the winter. This process should also help our battle with worms (remember there is nothing we can apply now to get rid of worms and worm casts are going to be a huge problem in the future years). 

We will continue to apply seaweeds, bio stimulants, Humic acids and Molasses to all the areas as a way of reducing the stress and encouraging new life and growth. 

Do not underestimate the amount of work required to get this back with winter just around the corner and our battle to get back to full grass coverage with the right grass species and little to no weed continues in what is a very short time period from Autumn into winter and the added issue of leaves falling. 

Failure would leave us with bare areas all winter and none of us want that. So please be patient when you see us out tining away or seeding areas. We are doing this for you. 

It’s going to take time and dedication to achieve are goals after this summer! 

Matt