Inter-seeding Bentgrass Into Areas On Greens With Winter Damage.

Many courses in the northeast suffered very severe winter damage this winter.  We are not severe here but we do have some stubborn areas where the turf is not going to come back very quickly.  The top (2) photos are from April 16th, when we manually spiked and seeded the thin areas on the greens with A4 creeping bentgrass.  The bottom (2) photos are from May 15th when we went into these thin areas again with a slit-seeder machine that physically injects seed into a groove made into the green.  This allows for the seed to soil contact we need for effective germination of the seed.  These areas will be nursed back to health with frequent watering to allow for complete germination.  Getting some bentgrass to fill into the voids will go a long way in the future as the bentgrass is way more hardy than the poa annua that populated the thin areas before last winter.  We will repeat the process on any thin areas as we go forward in getting the greens in championship condition!

Mike O'Neill, GCS

Irrigation Problems...More Numerous Than Usual!

The Irrigation system this year has really cost us a lot of down time.  We started to fill the system 3 weeks  ago and continue to find around 2 leaks every time we try to pressurize the system.  I have blogged regarding the system before but the cold, long winter, coupled with very antiquated  and fragile piping create way more work for our staff.  I am hopeful we can get ahead of the fixes but the normal maintenance of the golf course gives us all we can handle without all the labor involved with fixing the leaks.

Mike O'Neill, GCS

Remedy For Winter Injury...Drainage!

With the winter being the toughest winter in 30 years by many reports, we can really see our weaknesses on the course.   The weaknesses in question are that of greens internal drainage.  The damage on the low spot on 16 green is a direct result of not allowing the water to drain from the green internally through the winter months.  We have recently trenched and installed internal drainage with our staff, to greatly improve the drainage, health and hence, playability of the 16th green.

 Neatly removing a thin strip of sod, to be replaced with new sod from our nursery green in the near future.

                                      Trenching to a depth of 18" to allow for drain tile install.

             We used a laser transit to allow for correct slope and flow of the drained water off the green.

Drain tile install.

We backfilled the pipe and trench with a special "Greens drainage" sand to allow for increased percolation into the drain line.

The night after we installed the line, a rain event occured and we can see the water flowing through the green and into the pipe already!