Cinnabar Hills Turf Twister

This morning while making the rounds, I noticed something unusual on the 4th green of the Mountain course. From the cart path I saw a square the size of a golf flag that was off color compared to the rest of the green. Upon closer examination, I saw that it was actually an imprint of the flagstick and flag on the green.  

The morning prior, we applied wetting agent to the greens.  Wetting agents assist with both water penetration into the soil and retention once there.  When applied, they need to be followed by irrigation to be effective.  That night though the flagstick didn't make it back into the cup and where the flag was didn't receive any irrigation.  The rest of the green was looking like steamed broccoli (expected) while the area where the flagstick was had dew and looked like normal.  I don't expect anything other than interesting story to tell from this incident.

Temp Greens

3 Canyon green

I never thought that I would have to announce that we would have to use temporary greens in Northern California, but be that as it may, we have four temporary greens today.  #6 of the Lake course and #1,3, & 6 of the Canyon course have temporary greens.  Like some of my Midwest brothers, we have placed pins in the approaches and painted a 3ft radius around the pin.  Get it in the circle and you're good.  Being an optimist at heart, there are definitely some eagle opportunities to be had!

Being that we have kept people off of the 4 greens mentioned, damage should be minimal if any at all.  We will keep our eyes on the situation and definitely treat those greens with a little extra TLC.

1 Canyon Temp green

6 Canyon Temp green

Deep Tine

Last week we were able to get all of the greens punched with our deep tine aerator from Toro.  It took 12 hours at 0.8 mph, but it is well worth it.  Since we started doing this last year our roots have been much longer than normal which is by no coincidence.  If you recall, I wrote an article in May about our roots, but I failed to mention that the deep tine is a big part of that.  From the pictures below, root depth and hole depth are almost equal.  


Aside from great rooting, we get better air/ water exchange through the soil profile and we also break up the small pan layer we have.  A pan layer is formed typically around 3.5" deep where normal greens aerators typically go down to.  When inserting a soil probe, you'll feel it get much firmer to press in at this layer and water will also have a hard time getting through that layer.  

Topdressing and Getting the Sand In

While I have written about topdressing the greens in the past, I thought I would re-iterate why we topdress greens, but also talk about how we work the sand in to the green.

For me, I have two goals in mind when I topdress. The first is to make the greens smoother. We have an incredible amount of foot traffic on our greens and by no coincidence, a lot of ball marks. Both foot traffic and ball marks leave indentations in the surface and the sand helps smooth them out. The second reason is to dilute our thatch layer to keep the greens firm and draining. Thatch is the layer of dead and decaying organic matter below the surface. Too much thatch and the greens get soft. If you get the thatch level right, the greens will be much firmer. A great example of this is any portion of a green that has bunker sand splashed on it all the time. I was walking across 5 canyon green the other day in the front and I thought I was walking on the cart path.

So knowing the benefits of topdressing you are probably asking yourself how the sand gets in the thatch. I have tried probably 10 different methods of working the sand in and this year I may have come across the best way. We allow the sand to dry as much as possible before play gets there and we then pass a brush over the green (picture right). The brush has an electric motor that allows the operator to raise and lower the brushes on demand. Immediately following the brush we

pass our vibrating rollers over the green. This further pushes the sand down to the base of the plant. Come nightime, we will turn the green sprinklers on for approximately 40 minutes to further push the sand down.

The end result is hardly noticeable to most golfers and provides a great putting surface to play on.

4 Lake Update

I had to pull the trigger and re-sod #4 lake green on Thursday morning. While there were still some green plants mixed in, some of the green plants were starting to turn yellow at the crown. The sod came from our nursery green and matches well with what is currently on the green. The upcoming rain showers over the weekend should help it root very fast. Don't worry about walking on it or putting over it as we took a deep cut of sod (2").

What the *#!*

If you have seen 4 lake in the last 5 days, you will know exactly what the title means. If you haven't seen it, I unfortunately have pictures.

I don't know what material caused this, but I do know that it was not gas or diesel. If it were gas or diesel, the area would be completely dead. I know it happened Tuesday during the day because we watered the greens heavy that night explaining the runoff look. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter how it happened, but rather what we are doing about it. Currently and fortunately there is a lot of green grass in the brown area so I think we should be fine in a matter of a week or so. If the area digresses, we will then have to sod which I am not hoping for.

Fill 'em Up

We just completed another very succesful aeration and I have some great pictures and a video to share with you.

Last year I mentioned that we now blow the holes into the sand vs. dragging them in. The first pic shows how we blow the sand into the middle of the green. The second pic shows us blowing the sand back to the outside like splitting the red sea.

With all of this work, the greens go from looking covered in sand to beautifully filled aeration holes.

Below is a video of me making one pass with the blower to give you an idea of how we are doing it. You may have to turn your sound down as the blower is pretty loud.