A Busy September and October

September was another very busy month for us. We completed aeration on all the greens and tee boxes throughout the course. Fairway aeration should also be wrapped up this week. We aerate these areas on the course for many beneficial reasons. Aeration is important in re-leaving compaction of the playing surfaces from golfer, maintenance, and equipment traffic that takes place throughout the season. It is also valuable in removing thatch, which is the dead and decaying plant matter that builds up at the surface from cutting and other cultural practices. Too much of this thatch is a bad thing and can really limit the plants root depth, water holding capacities, air flow, etc which all will result in an unhealthy plant. Aeration also helps to promote new growth by the action of us cutting the above ground root systems that "creep" from our creeping bentgrass with the aerator tines and creating new growth points. Another important factor that aeration allows for is the improved water infiltration, air circulation and nutrient contact with the soil. So overall, aeration may be a nuisance for golfing and it may make a mess of things, but it is a very important and necessary operation that we perform that greatly helps to keeps our turf healthy.

Greens being aerated

Tee box aeration

Fairway Aeration

We are also in the process of re-doing the drainage in the left greenside bunker on hole number 1 that is consistently wet. We should wrap this job up early next week and it will then be one of the nicest bunkers on the golf course. 

Our final fungicide applications will be taking place on greens, tee boxes and fairways beginning this next week also. The fungicide helps to protect the plant from any winter fungus borne disease that could develop and harm the turf. The most common disease that we would encounter in the winter in Saskatchewan would be snow mold. The fungicide does also help to protect the plant against winter stresses like desiccation. Desiccation is the drying out of the plant tissues to the point of death from exposure to extreme cold and drying winter winds.

Irrigation blowout will be taking place Wednesday or Thursday next week. This is usually a two day process in which we blow compressed air through all of our irrigation lines to remove any water to prevent the lines from freezing over the winter. The freezing can destroy irrigation heads, connections, valves and stress the lines.

Irrigation blowout last year

To finish off the month of October we will be tarping all of the greens and putting snowfence on and around all greens and tee boxes. We tarp and snowfence these area to help protect the turf from the extremes of winter. The tarps act as a layer of insulation and the snowfence helps to trap snow which helps to insulate the turf. The process is basically performed to prevent desiccation, which was something I had just talked about.

So we are keeping our fingers crossed that Mother Nature will be good to us for the rest of this month so that we can easily carry out all of these jobs and have the golf course go into winter happy and healthy so that we can get off to a great start to the 2015 golf season next year!

A frosty view of holes 4,5,6 and 7