Vandalism at Minor Park

We had some vandalism overnight on a few of our greens and tee boxes.  The putting green and tee box #4 got the worse of it.  We had to strip out a spot on the putting green and replace it with sod from our Nursery green. The black marks where they decided to burn out on the green have been left for now to see what the turf does in these areas.

Damage on Putting Green

Turf removed and replaced from nusery green

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frost Damage

As we begin to get later into December and the start of the new year we will begin to see a lot more frost mornings.  I just wanted to post a picture of what frost damage does to the grass if you walk out on it. I know frost in the morning is an inconvenience and not many people like to wait for it to clear so they can play. But if we can stay off of it until the maintenance staff can give the all clear, we hope to see less of these pictures in the future.

Time To Put The Zoysia To Bed!

As I sit here writing this, I look out my shop window and see a nice blanket of frost throughout the course.  With Temperatures getting low enough for frost and the highs just cracking the 60's and 70's the warm season Zoysia will start to shut down and proceeded into dormancy for the winter.  About Mid- September we applied a fertilizer application of 5-10-31 to harden the zoysia off.  About a week later we mowed our fairways and tees for the last time.  If you have played lately you probably notice that they are getting tall.  We do this to help protect the crown of the plant so when it goes through the brutal Missouri winters ( the ones we usually get unlike last winter) it will be protected and allow for less winter kill of Zoysia when it comes out in the Spring.

 

The Month of September was greatly welcomed in by myself and my hard working staff. I would like to thank everyone on my staff for the hard work they showed during the hottest and driest summer in quite some time.  With the cooler temperatures we have received over the last month, we were able to get out 2000 pounds of tall fescue seed into our rough that was badly hit with the no rain, high temperatures and lack of irrigation coverage.

 

Now is the perfect time to get out and enjoy these nice days and perfect course conditions at Minor Park Golf Course. I look forward to seeing you on the Golf Course.





 



 

 

 



Root Pruning #9 green

I began to notice some major decline of the collar on number 9.  When I got here in February, this area was bare so we sodded it from the sod that was on the existing nursery green before we rebuilt the nursery green 2 months later.  With the temperatures being so hot we were on a regiment of watering greens with overheads in the evening and mornings consisted of watering spots and collars then light cool down runs in afternoon.  We have been doing this process for the last 3 months and this area kept declining.  I decided to see if it was a problem under the turf.  I dug a small hole right next to the collar and noticed 3, 1 inch sized roots about 3 inches below ground.  This finding lead me to believe that the 2 trees that are near the green was stealing the water before the turf could take it in.  Here are some photos of the spot in decline and the 2 trees by the green.

We borrowed a walk behind trencher and proceed to root prone about a quarter of the way around the green.  What this process will do is sever the roots that are into the green and in about 2 days those roots will stop taking water from the green.  We have noticed that some of the spots on the green are starting to bounce back after this process.

Digging the trench around the green to sever any roots that are into the green.

The open trench we found a lot of surface roots and rock.  The roots started about 2 inches below the surface.

In the process of filling the trench back in and then replacing the sod back on it.

Finished Product

Tenacity spray on 13 fairway and cool season tees

About 3 weeks ago we sprayed a product called Tenacity on our cool season tees and 13 fairway to control the goose grass and crabgrass in our turf.  What this product does is shuts down the plants HPPD an enzyme in the biosynthesis of carotenoids.  This enzyme protects the chlorophyll, the pigment in plants responsible for photosynthesis from too much light energy.  Without carotenoids, light destroys chlorophyll causing new growth to turn white resulting in death of plant.  As we mow the white becomes less and less visible as it kills the grassy weeds Here are some links to information on Tenacity:

Active Ingredient
Whitening of Weeds

 Crabgrass Whitening off on Cool Season Tee

New irrigation controller installation

As you can see from my previous post we have installed all 110 heads that service the greens and have proceeded to move onto new controllers to replace the old SBM 1230 pin and dials with new Par plus digital controllers.  We currently have 5 completed out of 9 and are hoping to finish those within the next month.

 

 New Pad for new irrigation Controllers

 Splice box where old controllers were located and the new controller on pedestal.

Pile of concrete from old controller pads.  Concrete was 14 inches thick and had to use jackhammer to get out.

Old controllers and new pad location

Finished product before back filling of soil

New Irrigation Installation

Sorry for the large gap between post, with the temps heating up and the irrigation upgrade, myself and the staff has been very busy keeping everything Mowed and watered.   As some of you have been out on the course you may have seen certain greens with holes all around it and me sitting in one of the holes. I am in the process of installing 110 new sprinkler heads to replace to old  water ineffecient toro heads.  Our system is a single row system from tee to green.  What this means is there is one head every 100 ft from the tee to the green down the middle of the fairway.  Once it gets to the green tthey average 5-6 heads on them. So if you play out here much you will see that our outer rough (anything that is not within a 100ft  diameter of a sprinkler head) is brown.  Since we have no irrigation out there, this is why we really stress the no carts in rough this time of the year. We are putting in Rainbird 700  turf sprinklers.  Installing these will allow the heads to  all come up and go off at the same time.  They will also put out a consistant and even stream of water on the green.  I started on Monday after everything arrived, and I currently have 5 holes completed. We also have nine new control boxes we will be putting in down the road so look for that blog.


 Old Toro Head.  Here I'm in the process of removing the head and cutting the wires that supply power and communication to the head.

This is the adapter that converts the old toro heads to allow for the new rainbird head to be installed on existing swing arms.  The bottom of apapter is NPT threads which means the have to be taped.  The top is called Acme threads. This have a gasket that sets in the heads allowing for no tape to be used.












The new rainbird 700 installed and wired.  its ready to be backfilled and leveled.












New Sprinklers in Action!  All come up at the same time and rotate the same speed allowing uniform coverage on greens.

Zoysia Conversion on 12 Approach

We are able to purchase 600 yards of high quality Zoysia sod from Meadowbrook Golf and Country Club.  They have a 3 acre nursery on the golf course which they allowed us to harvest from. About 5 years ago the City of Kansas City converted the existing fairways and tees to Zoysia. The only ones that were not converted were 12 approach 16 approach and 13 Fairway.  With this sod we were able to purchase we are going to convert 12 approach (which is completed) and 16 approach. The previous approach was a mixed bag of Poa, tall fescue, perennial Ryegrass and a hint of Bermuda.

Existing approach on #12

 We started by stripping off the existing turf to prep the area for the Zoysia Sod.  We were able to save about half of the sod which we laid in  other areas on the course. Once all turf was removed we brought in carts full of soil that we used to level any low areas and shaved down any high spots.

Removal of existing turf

Once soil was brought in we aerified the area to remove some compaction, put down a starter fertilizer and finished the grading for sod.  This process was completed on Tuesday May 15th.

Finished Dirt work

On Wednesday May 16th, we loaded up the sod cutter and 2 trucks and headed over to Meadowbrook Golf and Country Club.  We had to cut the sod, pallet it, load it on the trucks and trailer and haul it back to Minor Park Golf Course.  It took 2 trips to get all the sod needed for the area.  In all it totaled 9 pallets of sod to completed this conversion.

Finished approach with zoysia

We plan on doing 16 approach starting on Tuesday May 22, 2012, so look for upcoming pictures of that project.

Redesign of Landscape Beds

Some of you may have seen the redesign of the landscape bed by #18 green.  When I first got here this bed was completed covered in weeds and sucker trees and the ornamental grasses were scattered all over the place.  We decided to save what grasses we could and replant them in a better looking pattern. we then stripped off all the sod and edged the bed. We finished the bed by adding fresh mulch to give it a clean look.

 We also addressed an issue at the driving range. Due to the amount of golfers hitting balls and setting on the benches to watch, the turf around the benches took a huge hit. So we decided to take out the dead turf and replace it around the benches with a mulch bed that will take the traffic of everyday use. As you can see in the picture we still have a lot of turf decline we have to address in the future. Our plan is to come up with a solution that will allow golfers access to the driving range tee without having to walk through the grass to get to it.

Nursery Green Construction 5-1-12

As you can see the original nursery was in rough shape, so we decided to take our brand new sod cutter and strip everything off to bare ground.

After removal of original sod, we began the process of leveling the green with a box blade, hand rakes, and a mechanical trap rake.

The next step after leveling the surface we began the process of prepping the soil with amendments and seeding it to pencross bentgrass.

We then took the trap rake and set the seed by using the knobs on the tires. Final step was putting a snow fence around it to keep out wildlife and Golfers!

This is a picture of the nursery greens on May 10, 2012.

10 days after seeding

Greens Aerification

On Sunday evening April 8th we began the process of aerification on our greens.  We were able to get 9 holes punched and picked up before night fell upon us and we were unable to continue.  We picked up where we left off on Monday April 9th and finished punching and picking up cores by 11:00 am.  After the process of removing the material from greens we began topdressing sand onto the greens to fill in the holes.  After the sand dries, we were able to start to drag in the sand.  This process was completed by 6:00 pm and were able to open all 18 holes for play on Tuesday April 10th.  This is a time consuming process that no one enjoys but it is extremely beneficial to the health of the greens.

Its been a little over 2 weeks since we completed the Aerification of Greens.  They are recovering nicely from this and continue to fill the holes with new healthy turf.  Between these 2 weeks we were able to get some much needed fertilizer on them to help speed up regrowth and got out our fungicide application, Primo/Proxy Application and a wetting agent to help move water through the Profile.

We are off to a fast start to the 2012 golfing season.    I would like to start my first blog by highlighting a few changes that we have started here at Minor Park. Hopefully you have seen the new tee features, if so we removed all of the red pavers and edged around the ball washer and hole sign.  When I get my shipment of mulch in, we will be mulching those areas to complete the look. Hole #2 shows the finished product.   We began last week mowing our rough at the height of 3 inches.  As many of you know is has taken off very quickly and we are doing our best to get around as quickly as possible.  We also were able to get carts off path last weekend allowing us to get out our new signage to help direct traffic a bit easier.  We also added 150 stakes in the middle of fairways to help identify yardage for the golfers. On the cultural side we got out dimension plus fertilizer in our rough (grassy weed control), and also applied our second application of Primo/Proxy (seed head suppression) and Fungicide to our Greens.  We will begin aerification on the evening of April 8th and continue through the 10th   I hope you are enjoying the new Minor Park and I hope you play often.

Existing red pavers around tee features

                                                

Finished product on #2 Tee

                                                           

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