Early Winter Update

Things have continued to be fairly busy around the golf course even though the season is over and snow is on the ground. We have been busy indoors getting everything prepared for the 2015 golf season.

We completed all the reel grinding and repairs just before the end of December when my Assistant was done for the year and goes on winter break until March. All the reels are now back on the mowers and ready to do some cutting in 2015!

Some of our reels after being ground

Reels back on the mowers

I am mostly done all the equipment maintenance and repairs. I am hoping to be very close to being done by the end of this week before I go on my little bit of a Christmas break. The work done in this process is all the major service and lubrication work and then any repairs that need to be completed that were not done during the season. This has been a little bigger job than past years which makes sense as a large portion of our fleet is now 5 years old and coming off lease. As a result we will be keeping most of the equipment for another year but a few pieces that are starting to show their hours are being replaced for next year as the cost of upkeep would be greater than the value in keeping these pieces.

New steering rack installed on a Gator

Once I am back from my Christmas break I will quickly wrap up what equipment work still remains and then most of my work will shift to the office. I will be completing all our cultural and agronomic calendars and reworking some of our programs for 2015. Our employee safety and OH&S programs are going to be completely overhauled this winter also. And then ofcourse our general record keeping, IPM and maintenance programming needs to be gone through quickly and altered for 2015. 

One thing that has been going on outside is Mother Natures unpredictability. In the second half of November she finally supplied us with a nice snow cover and had the course looking pretty good to start the winter with some very ideal temperatures also. She then decided to warm things up here a little bit in December and it has resulted in the majority of our snow cover melting away. There are a few problems associated with this. First off, we need snow cover to protect the turf from the extreme colds and winds of winter so I am hopeful that she will give us a little more snow here soon to build up the insulation again. But the biggest issue with the melt is the formation of ice. As of right now the areas that I have checked on the course are seeming to be looking okay. There seems to be very little ice formation out there so I am expecting that we will be okay. It appears that most of the water that did form was able to drain off the green surfaces from under the tarps and the only ice that we are really seeing is around the edges of the snow drifts that remain. The ice that I am seeing in these areas does not seem to be very thick and it is also quite porous. Porous ice is what we want because basically the cloudy white appearance it has indicates the presence of air pockets within the ice. Basically this means that the exchange of fresh air can still take place and the turf can still breathe. Another positive thing that we have on our site is that our greens are not very old overall and our weedy grass population is not very high (Poa Annua). Poa Annua is a type of grass that naturally seeds from the presence of its seed within our soils. Poa Annua can be a very desirable turf type for golf courses but overall it is not very desirable in climates like ours. This is because it can not tolerate cold temperatures or ice cover very well. So basically our mostly pure bentgrass greens should be fine in the few areas of ice due to its cold hardiness and ability to survive under ice conditions for well over 100 days.

No ice formed under the snow on the greens

Porous ice where there is ice

I have seen a few pictures of courses from British Columbia to Manitoba that have not been as lucky as us and the ice formation is major. In this case the labor required to remove the ice is major, plus the added stress is terrible. So for the sake of my fellow superintendents I hope that most of us have avoided the ice and for the ones that have not I hope the removal process is quick and successful.

I will have another update for everyone sometime in January updating you about what has been going on at the course and the plans for the rest of the winter. Until then I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and a happy and healthy holiday season!

Hole 16 this past summer