Thursday, August 22, 2013

Deep Watering FW's

Since I have been in the business, I have been a deep and infrequent believer when it comes to irrigation on the greens.  We'll run anywhere from 60 - 180 minutes of water from each head on greens and then shut them off for the next 4-7 days depending on the weather.  Not only do we have a strong and healthy root system, but Poa annua doesn't do as well with this watering method with less water at the surface. 

I was recently made aware of an article that Dave Wilber (@turfgrasszealot) shared about deep and infrequent watering, but not just on greens.  We had a closed nine at the time since we were aerating so I decided to water the Mountain course fairways for 60-99 minutes.  

Irrigation run times
I was skeptical at first since we were wet around the drains, which was expected, but our dry spots barely had a 1/2" of water.  Either way, I shut off the irrigation for the following night and watched to see what would happen.  I still needed to go out every morning and get some extra water on the dry spots (50 sprinklers vs. 400), but I didn't turn the Mountain fairway program on until Sunday evening which was 6 days later!  

Entire profile is moist and 
nice white roots coming 
out the bottom
Our soil profile consists of 1-2" of thatch with some sand/ top soil mixed in and below that we have heavy clay.  With the deep watering, I was able to wet the heavy clay on 75% of the fairway.  I was actually able to get a soil probe into the clay which is not normal for August.  When our surfaces start to dry out now, there is some moisture down below that is wicked up through capillary action.  

After almost 8 years at Cinnabar, I feel I have stumbled upon something that may change the way I irrigate the course going forward.  It has really got my brain churning and I couldn't be more excited.  This is just one of the many reasons I love being a superintendent!

Friday, August 9, 2013

Witch's Brew

Aeration of the greens at Cinnabar Hills is completed now and while making my notes, it is really incredible what we both removed and added to the greens.  On average, 500,000 plugs were removed from each green which roughly equals 112 cu ft of material (thatch).  In its place, we put down sand at a rate of 14 tons per acre meaning every green got close to 2 tons.  


In addition to the sand, and what I'm most pleased about, are all the amendments we were able to get out along with the sand.  Making the list surprised me and I wanted to show everyone just what we added to what I'm going to call our witch's brew.

- Eco-lit                                 - Dry kelp meal
- Greensand                           - Composted poultry manure
- Hard rock phosphate           - Soft rock phosphate
- Humic acid                          - Fulvic acid
- Sul-Po-Mag                        - Calcium carbonate
- Potassium                            - Yucca extract

That is a quite a change from the past when we typically just added calcium carbonate and potassium, but the results are seen with a quicker recovery.  We will also see lasting benefits from these amendments for years to come.