Wooga Hay

 

 

 

If you have been out to Wild Horse this week you have seen our haying operation on some of the "wooga".   So what is the purpose of such operations?  Most of you will appreciate the easier search for balls and better chance for recovery from the rough and while that is a benefit of swathing, it is not the main priority.  The goal of haying is long-term health of the prairie that separates one hole from the next.   Our intention is to set back some of the warm season native grasses which should create  space for other forbs to prosper.  This is similar to what prescribed burning does in the spring to cool season grasses except during the summer the target is warm season grasses.  Grazing would be the best option to selectively thin grasses and create species diversity, but that isn't very feasible so we will use haying as an alternative that can reduce overall production and open up the canopy of the stand.

 

So why have we not done this before?  Our goal with our burn program that started 15 years ago was to reduce bluegrass and bromes while encouraging warm season native grasses.  Up until now we have not wanted to dissuade our native grasses but we feel like we have enough of those species that we can start limiting their production to maintain a good variety of cool and warm season grasses and also encourage more wildflowers and forbs. 

 

Our plan is to swath some areas now, others around the end of July, and a couple areas will get it both times.  We want to see the difference in intensity and timing and how it affects each area and what plants seem to respond best.  We will probably do this for a few years to see how the prairie responds during both wet and dry years.  Prairie evolved under fire and disturbance such as grazing so that is what we will try to simulate with our prescribed burns and haying operation.

 

 

 

 

Nursery Green

 

Here you see our nursery green that was so valuable this spring.  The first picture shows it as we were taking the last plugs out of it to repair our greens and the second is how it looks after we tilled, harrowed, seeded and cultipacked it.  We need to get a good start on growing it back just in case we need it next year.  I sure hope not! 

We were lucky that the nursery didn't have much winterkill and we were able to use most of the sod we had on it.  It usually winters well as it is protected down in a hollow east of the driving range.  As you know we seeded greens  a couple of times but we were glad to have sod available to fix up really damaged areas quickly and also to repair spots that didn't fare well with seedlings.  As mentioned in the last post it takes a lot of careful work to lay sod into greens because there is little margin for error or the sod will be scalped or too low.  Those patches take about three weeks to knit together so you can't see the seam lines.  Many have been in the ground about a week and a half so while you see many of them right now, within a week or two they will meld nicely with the rest of the green.

 

You can a see a small area in the far right corner of the second picture that is tilled up.  We are going to plant a couple new varieties of bentgrass there to see how they perform in our climate and management.  There continues to be improvements in bentgrass (and all grasses for that matter) with selective breeding  and we may at some point want to take advantage of those improvements.  So as the summer goes on we will also interseed into the chipping green with a newer variety to see how it performs and if we can establish it through interseeding into our present greens.  If our evaluation provides some good results we may start interseeding the rest of the greens in the future.  But that would be down the road a couple of years.  Years like this though make you consider all options to provide good putting greens and newer varieties may help do that in the future. 

 

What a difference a month makes!

 

This is 7 green on April 29 and May 29.  Sorry for the blurry pic but you can see the dramatic difference.  While there are still some blemishes the green looks much better!  At times during the recovery it seems like no progress is being made until you look back a week or even a month.  This shows how particularly bad our situation was.  When there is more dead than alive you have some serious issues!  

It has been a trying time from the disappointment of losing the greens to the struggle with weather difficulties during May but we think we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I appreciate the support and encouragement many of you have given and want to recognize all my crew for their hard work.  I want to give extra kudos to Taylor Walker who nearly single handedly sodded and patched most of our dead spots!  That is over 1000 sq. feet of sod and 4000 plugs!!!

 The greens have not made it all the way back to full recovery but each day we are seeing improvement and think within a couple of weeks we will be 95% healed (about 75% now).  The greens are still a bit shaggy and inconsistent but we are starting to manage them in a more normal manner now and the putting quality should improve in the next couple of weeks.

As for the rest of the course it is looking great.  I said we have 69 acres of great turf and 1 acre bad but it was the bad that was in the most important spots!  Just like you- we cant wait to get to that 70 acres of good!

Greens Progress Report

The greens continue to get better as they recover from winterkill.  We have seeded most areas a couple times to try to reestablish a strong population of plants.  In the worst areas we have sodded and patched with sod from our turf nursery.  We will continue to do that until all areas are healed.  But for the most part we just need time for the turf to grow back together.

 Progress has not been as quick as I or you have hoped but we are gaining.  Obviously the weather has been a factor in the slow recovery for a few reasons.  First we have had a couple of very intense rains this May that have washed away some seed and carried the topdressing away that protects the seedlings from drought and traffic.  Secondly, a late frost on May 12 hit our second round of seedlings pretty hard and injured or killed many of those.  Finally, as discussed in a prior post recovery from winterkill is most difficult just because of the cool soil temperatures and lack of consistent temperatures to promote growth.  That definitely has been the case this spring.

Most people wonder "When will the greens be back to normal?"  Next week they will be better and in two weeks better yet as incremental progress is made.  Within a couple of weeks many of the small blemishes will be grown together and greens will be decent.  As we move into June we will start to manage greens more like we normally do and by mid-late June they should be back to what you expect at Wild Horse.
We are working as hard as we can to get back to good conditions and appreciate your patience and also the encouragement many of you have given to me and my staff.

Greens Recovery

We finally started seeing some seedlings emerge last week from our seeding on April 14. (Notice the light green rows in the picture above).  It took about 6 or 7 days longer than normal due to the cold temperatures but we are glad to see some new grass.  Seeding in marginal soil temperatures usually leads to inconsistent stands which is what we are seeing.  In some places we have solid rows of grass in our verticut slits but other rows only show sporadic plants and then some rows have no plants.  We are not surprised by this because the longer the seed lays in the cold ground the less germination you tend to get.  But we did get some plants started early in the seeding window especially under the covers.  Then we went back into the spots that had washed the worst from the hard rain or had poor germination and seeded again on April 28.  We also seeded a few spots again today after deciding our stand was marginal.  We think these latest seedings will perform better now that soil temperatures are favorable.  So we have been doing everything possible to create a good seed bank for new plants to emerge and fill our voids.  Again once the seed comes up there are other perils that can harm new seedlings.  We have already seen a couple cold nights ding the leaf tips of some seedlings and a couple of areas look to have some disease affecting them.  So it is a long road to recovery but we are off and walking!

Phase two of the recovery process is patching isolated dead spots with sod from our nursery.  We have started this time-consuming process by concentrating our efforts in the cuppable areas.  Then we will go back around again and start patching seeded areas that didn't germinate well and just keep making the rounds until we have a complete green.  This phase will probably last all May as we tackle this tedious process as time allows.  We have a decent amount of sod available in our nursery so we will use as much as we can to create a playable surface the quickest.

Speaking of playability, as mentioned in the last post the putting quality is at its poorest right now but as the seedlings start to mature and the remaining plants creep into the voids, the surface will become more consistent in a couple of weeks and will continue to get better toward the end of the month.  By then the greens should be pretty decent with only isolated humps with thin grass.  I expect that by the middle to end of June all winter damaged greens will be completely healed.
 

Greens Seeding

We completed the greens seeding process last Tuesday and Wednesday.  We modified our verticut reels to cut a wider slit and then dropped the seed, verticut again, seeded again, and then dragged the seed in.  Then we finished by topdressing and dragging once more.  The goal is to create a seedbed that can germinate as many plants as possible to minimize recovery time.  Unfortunately the heavy rain we had the past few days may have moved some seed and it may be necessary to reseed some spots at a later date.  As I talked about last year when some of my colleagues suffered winterkill on their greens, recovery from winterkill on greens is the most challenging task in turf management.  First the bentgrass seed is about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.  So it can easily wash, dry out, smother, or blow away.  So just getting the seed to germinate is difficult.  Once that happens, the seedling is not very vigorous due to its small seed size -bigger seed means more energy stored in the seed to help it get going.  Then there is the problem of traffic from mowers and golfers so even once the seedling gets started it can be ripped out or damaged from traffic.  To mitigate some of these issues our greens management will be much different than usual.  First, we will water regularly during the day to keep the seed moist-it can only take a few minutes of drought at the crucial root extension stage to lose our little guys.  Secondly, we will minimize mowing as much as possible during the next 3-4 weeks while still attempting to keep a putting surface.  Finally all this must be done with temperatures that are marginal for seedling germination so maturation of the seedling takes much longer than you or I woulld like.  If the damage we incurred from the winter happened in July the recovery time would be about a third as long so patience is key.

 

It is readily apparent now what is alive and what is not compared to a couple of weeks ago.  The putting quality up to now has been OK but the greens in the next few of weeks will be more inconsistent as the dead grass recedes and the alive grass grows.  As the remaining live plants start to fill in and seedlings germinate and mature the surface will become more consistent but that may not happen until mid to late May with good weather.  We apologize for the inconvenience but are doing all we can to remedy the situation. 

Spring???

This video is outside the shop this AM.  Not too exciting but wanted to make sure I could get a video uploaded from my phone to this platform.  As most of you know this blog was contained within the Wild Horse Golf Course website under Superintendent News and will continue that way for awhile during the transition to this platform.  Once the transition is complete the tab will take you directly here to view the blog.  We think this version will be easier for us to post pictures and video which should provide you with more information.  Also more content will be stored and indexed to allow you to look back at previous posts.  Hope you enjoy the changes and continue to follow the maintenance team at Wild Horse.