Glen Eagle Maintenance (7/19/24)

Last week was pretty dry, but this week more than made up for it as we have had to maneuver our way around the wet spots to get our work done.

For everyone keeping score at home, we have had 3” of rain since last Friday, 8.5” for July and 39.67” for the year.

Here is a video showing some of the water standing along the perimeter of the course. Please forgive the bad videography, I am not a drone flying pro.

You can see in the video some areas, like hole #8, are so wet we could only mow part of the fairway.

Water is flowing off the property as quickly as it can. The video shows water flowing out of the weir and even though water is moving out quickly, the shear volume of water trying to flow thru that small notch is nothing compared to the amount that will need to exit in order for the course to dry up.

From a course condition standpoint last summer we were spoiled when we only recorded 2.2” of rain in July. In comparison, to last year, this water looks abnormal but actually is pretty normal for this time of year.

We are still working hard on getting our cultural practices finished.

This week, we had a machine come in and do deep spike aerificaiton on fairways. Even this big piece of equipment gets bounced around when it hits the rock in the soil.

And worked on finishing the verticutting of fairways. After verticutting, the grass is stood up

And removed by circle cutting

Leaving a dramatic color difference between fairways and roughs.

The circle cutting process…

The final result of the verticutting, and circle cutting process.

We still have som work to do but as we near the end of the closure, our focus is shifting to prepping the course for play next Tuesday.

 A quick heads up, I will not have a blog entry next week. I am taking a few days of vacation and won’t have time on property to gather the needed photos/video. I’ll have another post to keep everyone updated in 2 weeks.

I look forward to seeing everyone on the course, and as always, if you have any questions, flag me down or shoot me an email. I always enjoy talking turf!

Glen Eagle Maintenance (7/11/24)

Saharan dust has made the sky grey most of the week but the sunrises early in the week were very nice.

The weather has cooperated and the crew has been working hard so we have made great progress on our task list for this second maintenance closure of the year.

This closure our primary goals were to Deep Tine (8”) aerify greens. Since our equipment will only go 3-4” deep, and purchasing equipment to do it in-house would be too expensive to only use a couple times a year, we contract an aerificaiton service to perform the work.

After aerificaiton, we topdress with straight sand, and brush the sand into the holes.

Tee, Collar, Approach, and Fairway Verticutting to remove thatch and grain

Wall-to-Wall Core Aerification to relieve compaction and reduce organics in the soil.

As usual, plenty of circle cutting and blowing to go with all of these major tasks.

I look forward to seeing everyone on the course, and as always, if you have any questions, flag me down or shoot me an email. I always enjoy talking turf!

Glen Eagle Maintenance (7/5/24)

Good morning Glen Eagle…

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer and had a great 4th of July!

The June rain was plentiful, as 23.04” fell. That almost equals the total amount of rain for all of last summer (25.13”). For comparison sake, last June we had only 8.05” of rain and the June average at GE is 12.19”. We needed it so I am glad to have it, I just hope it slows down a bit for the next two weeks while we are closed for our second summer maintenance closure.

With the help of the rain and a lot of working around wet spots, the course is looking great.

Over the past week there has been some concern with bunker conditions from some of our membership, specifically rock and shell in the sand.

The rock/shell is introduced over time from the native soil below the bunker sand. Most of the rock is introduced when the bunker sand is washed off the bunker face (slope) during heavy rains. Once the native soil is exposed, rocks from that soil are washed into the bunkers.

While that is the most prevalent way that rocks and shell are introduced, they can also come up thru the sand in a process called granular convection (seek link below). Basically, vibrations and in our case, water, cause the larger particles to shift, allowing smaller particles (sand) to move underneath the larger rock/shell eventually lifting the larger pieces to the top. Actually, it’s not so much the rock moving up as it is the sand moving down exposing the rock/shell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granular_convection#:~:text=Granular%20convection%20is%20a%20phenomenon,to%20types%20of%20fluid%20convection.

Just because washouts and granular convection occurs doesn’t mean we just throw our hands up and accept that the bunkers will continue to deteriorate. It simply means we have to do a good job day in and day out (especially during the summer rains) of removing the large rock. Also that , we schedule bunker sand replacement every 5 years or so to keep the shell (particles we can’t remove easily) from becoming a bigger issue.

We addressed the large rocks by training staff to be more diligent and consistent in daily removal.

Here is a picture of #10 green side bunker after our staff has prepared it for play. I would say they are above average condition for middle of summer conditions.

The shell is a bit harder to control and unless we line (a barrier between native soil and the bunker sand) the next time we renovate bunkers, shell and rock will always be, at-least to some extent part of our bunker material.

What we can and have done to help keep our bunkers as clean as possible as part of the reserve study, is schedule sand replacement on a 5 year basis starting in 2025.

I do want to provide some perspective, the pictures below are from another course in town, not mentioning names, and you can see we all have very similar issues. This course’s bunkers are only 3 years old so you can see it doesn’t take long for this issue to show up.

If anyone would like to talk more about our bunkers, please don’t hesitate to give me a call, email or stop by the office. Knowing what it’s important to our membership helps me focus on issues that make the most impact.

I look forward to seeing everyone on the course, and as always, if you have any questions, flag me down or shoot me an email. I always enjoy talking turf!