Snow Melt Field Trial and a small course update

With the coming of warmer temps, I am starting to shift my thinking from shop work to getting back out on the course.  I am so excited for these temps, as I'm sure everyone else is too!  I am going to warn you, this post is long and somewhat boring if you don't like melting snow!!!

let it burn/ then and now

This is something that I normally wouldn't like to see at the course, but since we decided to start the native burns this fall, this is a great sight to see.  Torching some of the areas that are severely overgown will allow a better stand of wildflowers popping up next spring.  This area was the little island between 13 and 14 fairways, and if you can remember, there was a pretty decent amount of wildflowers in this area this year.  We will continue to try and burn some more areas to restore some of the wildflowers.  Some areas that we have designated will be between 2 and 3 and between 2 and 6.  These are relatively large areas and require some very careful planning before we start the burn.  We did two smaller areas last Wednesday to "practice" and see how the fire and it's fuel will act so we can better understand how to control it in case of emergency.  The outcome was rather anti-climactic due to the moisture content that is still in some of the native areas.  We were able to light some of the drier, bunch type grasses, but most of the under layer was still actively green and growing, so it didn't burn as well as we wanted.  We will reconsider and try again maybe at the end of November to see what we can get burnt before the snow covers the ground!

This is a 2 part entry, mainly due to the lack of entries ALL SEASON LONG. We had a rough year, mainly due to winterkill and a somewhat under-amazing spring.
     

 

 

Here is a before picture of Number 9 green.  This was a sad sight this spring, and another reason why I take so many pictures to remind me of some of the worst areas and things that should have gone differently.

 

Here is the after picture taken the end of September.  Things change a lot in 6 months, and I sure am glad that they did.  We had so much winter kill that I was wondering all summer what I did wrong the fall before.  I looked back through all my records, and all my measurements were spot on, and the applications were all the same.  This year, we are going to switch to a different nozzle selection to put our fungicide down.  With the differences in nozzle selection, there should be a more uniform coverage of the leaf blade this year.  The reason I used a larger droplet sized nozzle last year was due to the amount of wind that we deal with here at Wildflower.  With the larger droplet size that reduces drift, you compromise the coverage on the leaf tissue due to the fact that the larger droplets will penetrate the leaf canopy and not cover the leaf blade as it needs to be.  With the change to a smaller droplet comes the increased risk of spray drift but the better coverage of the leaf blades.  We will have to spray on a very calm day to be able to get adequate coverage, but that is one of the only reasons I can think of why there was so much superficial damage to the turf. 

 

Thanks to you all for a great year at Wildflower and we will be continuing our fall time projects to improve the aesthetics and playability of the course!!!

Wildflower Driving Range is now open for 2014

 Although it may not feel like April, more like late October, the driving range is open for business at Wildflower.  We will be opening the driving range every day this week, weather permitting in the morning, to let all golfers come out and try out their new Christmas presents that they opened up this last Christmas. 

Fingers Crossed

     I took a very cold and windy course tour this morning to look at how things melted off the rest of Friday and Saturday.  Almost all of the greens at Wildflower are exposed and all but a few areas are disease free and looking to be ready for play in 5 days.  Despite our best efforts last fall, there was a little snow mold damage to 12 green, but with a little TLC once the temps come back to normal, we should be looking at a good "green-up" this spring. 

My opinion of snowmobiles...

Wildflower golf course will be tentatively open April 18th.  Man, that seems scary to say when its  April 9th.  Last year, this time I was wondering if I moved to Greenland instead of Minnesota...  Today was the first real day of working out on the course, and I was giddy and excited for spring to be here.  Although it was really tough to bring my spirits down, I still had cause to be upset for some people's actions over the last winter.  I don't know who, but I can assure you that if I did know, they would definitely be getting an ear full from me.

Spring is Here! Wildflowers soon to come!!!

Hello all:
      Yesterday marked the beginning of spring for us, and then of course we get a good blanket of snow last night and the temps are supposed to drop off the deep end here for the weekend.  I took a walk yesterday because it was 40 degrees and was moving snow off cart paths so I can get out and do some tree work.
                                                                                As of yesterday, this was a view looking back from the hill on #4.  There is a large puddle in the second fairway bunker on #3 fairway, but that is to be expected this time of year. 

 

I, however, did see some things that I wasn't to pleased about.

Welcome to work

Welcome to the Wildflower Golf Course Maintenance facility.  I wish I could have had a GoPro video Camera of me crawling into the shop this morning before this path was shoveled, probably would have gotten some laughs at 23 below zero this morning...  To say we have some drifts around the shop and pro shop is an understatement.  According to the Minnesota climatology website we're only in the 60th percentile for snow depth rankings according to the historical data, but the amount of drifting snow and where it rests is quite inconvenient.  Last year, we weren't even close to the amount of drifted snow around the shop as we are currently sitting, and it's not even February yet!

Summer is half over...

Hey all:
     Sorry for such a lapse in posts, we here at Wildflower have been extremely busy since we hit the ground running when we opened.  I am finally getting back in the office and getting things organized for the later half of the summer.  We had a great fourth at the course, with Friday's totals being well over 300 rounds played.  I want to thank you all for coming out and enjoying Wildflower.  Some things that we will be doing/ have been doing in the past few weeks:
     - you may have noticed that #3 green took quite a few steps back and in a hurry.  Last Sunday when we mowed in the morning, there was some LDS (Localized Dry Spot) on #3 and the PG.  When I came back around 3 pm, #3 had taken a huge turn for the worse.  Sorry for my lack of photos, but it's something that I'm not overly proud of.  Monday morning came around after a worried and sleepless night and I decided to go out and spray all 20 greens with what is called a soil surfactant.  At around 16 oz per acre, a little goes a long ways.  I often like to use the phrase : with golf course management, your dealing with thousandths of an inch and ounces per acre."  For those of you out there that don't realize that this is a blend of science and feel,  I encourage you to "read-up" on some of the golf course industry's many publications and blogs!!!
     A week later and #3 is slowly returning back to it's original shape, even thought we raised the HOC back to .155 to deal with some of the high temps and high humidity that was stressing the plants. 
    -  With the addition of the soil surfactant to the greens, we also sprayed all fairways and tees to combat the same problem that #3 green was having.  You may notice on many of the Tee boxes, that there are some severely dry areas.  When the thatch layer ( below the blades and crown of the plant) has the chance to dry out and you have an excessive amount of thatch, there is a tendency of that thatch to become HYDROPHOBIC- which means it is afraid of water.  Any irrigation you try to dump to it just simply runs off to a lower area and doesn't get the chance to work it's way into the soil where it is needed the most.  Our soil surfactant (Dispatch from Aquatrols) helps to relieve the surface tension of the thatch layer and allows the water to penetrate the soil where it is applied, thus relieving some of the stress of LDS.  Now, this isn't a magic bullet, but simply one of the steps in curing LDS on turf.  There are many studies being done showing the added benefits of applying fungicides to turf to not only combat the fungus, but to also strengthen the plant and aid the plant in relieving summer stress and heat stress.  We will try to get out and spray our tees and fwys with a combination of chlorothalonil and propiconazole, two systemic fungicides which work on a broad spectrum of diseases.  With the high consistent temperatures, the high humidity, and the somewhat lack of wind here in DL, there will inevitably be some Dollar Spot popping up; you may notice this disease on the nursery green approach and on some of the tees. 
     Dollar spot is a disease which loves having the sugars that the grass plants exude combined with the dew from the humidity at night not being taken off.  Dew+sugars+not removing dew=dollar spot.  Now this crude formula doesn't mean that anytime you have dew your going to have dollar spot.
    With my assistant being gone all this week and much of next week, our top priority after the Fourth of July will be maintaining the playing conditions with a little bit of irrigation expansion into areas that don't see any irrigation other than what natural rainfall we do get.    Coming from a golf course which ran around 1.3 to 1.4 million gallons of water each night to a golf course which only irrigates the fwys, greens and tees is quite a shock.  I am used to perfectly green from tee to green, and Wildflower was designed to let the rough go dormant in times of drought.  I know there will be some people out there that say, why waste the water on the rough, but you have to understand what a golf course really does for the environment in terms of being a filter for runoff and for the water that runs into our aquifers, lakes and streams.  I'm not overly-environmentally conscious, but every golf course superintendent has it on their agenda to reduce their chemical inputs, reduce their water usage, and overall make the landscape a more enjoyable place each and every day. 
     Our goal is not to expand the irrigation system to accommodate the 100+ acres and all the rough and prairie, but simply to expand the system to help some of the high traffic areas on the course.  There are many areas which receive no irrigation yet are extremely high traffic areas and you can see the consequences of cart traffic on these areas already.  Please accept our apologies for trenching this week, we are only trying to improve the golf course for years to come!!!
   Also- a special thanks to Jerry Johnson for coming out and trapping our little Caddyshack gophers... I think Mr. Johnson snared around 7 pocket gophers, the mnost famous being the gopher on 18 fwy.
   MUCH THANKS MR. JOHNSON!!!!!!

Gray Snow Mold

 DISCLAIMER:  I am not a plant pathologist!
      As you can see in these pictures, coming out of this record-setting winter we most likely will be dealing with a lot of snow mold issues.  Most snow mold preventative applications will last you 120 days or right around that magic number.  With this extended snow season, we are gearing up and ready for the advanced snow mold presence on the course.  I anticipate a lot of my time this spring will be spent tank-mixing and spraying diseased areas.  Lets say you sprayed PCNB and Iprodione around mid October... 120 days from Mid October gets you to mid February, and as we all know, its LATE APRIL and we still have plenty of snow on the ground.  Our attempts at clearing the greens were in vein; not two days after clearing greens and trying to melt the ice on them Mother Nature dealt us a good 6 to 8 inches of heavy snow...


     Even though the right precautions were taken last fall, snow mold is something that we will deal with year in and year out.  I will try and educate and elaborate on what these two diseases are and some of the means of curing the problem.
     There is a major difference in the two diseases.  Gray snow mold is caused by two species of Typhula: T. incarnata and T. ishikariensis. (1)  Pink Snow Mold is caused by Microdochium nivale.  
     For the sake of this  post and me not wanting to get too crazy with details, I will focus primarily on Gray Snow Mold.
      The symptoms of Gray snow mold develop under continuous snow cover of usually more than 60 days, something that we have obviously encountered this year.  As I write this post, it is yet again snowing!!!  Although this is a typical rule, there are always cases where there was not continuous cover and gray snow mold still popped up.
    
     Gray snow mold has sclerotia (black or brownish, naked-eye visible bodies) that survive from year to year.  This is a great way to ID gray snow mold from pink snow mold because pink doesn't have these bodies.  As you can see in the photos, there is a cobweb-like appearance near the edge of the melting snow.  That is referred to as the mycelial mass, something that in these pictures is highly visible, even from a distance.  Usually, snow molds form circles, but can coalesce to take over very large areas.  The ideal growth for gray snow mold is long periods of wet, cool weather on unfrozen ground.  If you get a large amount of snowfall before the grass is able to "harden-off" and freeze the soil, this is another scenario that is favorable to disease development.  Heavy fall applications of Nitrogen with lush growth before the plant hardens-off makes that area susceptible to the disease after the snow melts off.  When you think about it, there is a lot more leaf tissue due to the excessive fertilizing, which makes more areas for these sclerotia to hide and over-winter.  This excess tissue ( not always directly correlated to fertilization in the fall) also leads to more thatch.    Increased height of cut before the snowfall and accumulations of leaves will also harbor the pathogen and increase the amount you will see in the spring. 
     

 
 Notice how some of the spots have joined together to form irregular patches?  This is called coalescing and accounts for why snow molds can take over large areas of turf.

Check out the mycelial mass ( puffy, almost like light snow) that is raised up off the crown of the plant and up on the leaf blades. 

Resources:

(1) http://www.turffiles.ncsu.edu/diseases/Gray_Snow_Mold.aspx

 

Comments and questions or corrections are encouraged!  I am not claiming to be an expert and if there is something that sounds wrong to you, please leave a comment!  I love to learn more about what we are all experiencing and every one's thoughts are welcome.

 

April 19th update

This was just one week ago before the sequence of snow storms that we have received...  Its starting to look like spring is never going to come to Wildflower golf course.

 As you can see, there is a substantial amount of ice buildup under the foot or so of snow that was here on #1 green.  Tolly, my assistant, worked the JD5200 with the Farm King blower while I was walking the perimeters with a walk-behind blower.  The outer edges of the green WERE ( I say this because we have received plenty of snow in the last week) starting to show good signs of melting the ice up off the crown of the turf.  The JD was too heavy to get out to the edges and we feared that it would break through the ice and disrupt the bentgrass underneath. 

     By Wednesday, Tolly and I had cleared #1, #8, #18 and the putting green by the Pro-Shop.  Thursday morning the snow started... And Friday... All the way to yesterday, which was Thursday, April 18th, 2013...  Beth informed me that this has been the longest winter since the 1850's, I'm not clear as to what EXACT year it was, but this record-breaking winter just seems to keep it's grip on our area. 

 

Hope to see you all very soon, the weather is supposed to break and get some days of sunny weather so were looking forward to a good melt and get the golf season under way!
-Aaron

Snow Removal on #1 PG, #1, #8 & #18 Greens

      By this time last year, wildflower golf course was mowing their greens and golfers were chasing after the little white pill...  What a difference a year makes! 
      Monday started out by contemplating whether or not to remove snow from our most covered greens on the course.  After Tolly and I took a walk around and did some digging on the greens, we decided it was time to help Mother Nature along and get our greens uncovered.  Some of you may have passed by the Country Club and saw that they have already uncovered their greens.  Our reason for waiting is simply that we have predominately bentgrass greens and bent can withstand much colder temperatures and survive much longer under ice cover than Poa annua.  I'm not saying that the country club has Poa greens... I'm just saying that is why we decided to wait and uncover at this time. 
     While we decided to uncover greens, this proved to be the easiest task of the day.  Using a walk behind snow blower and the John Deere tractor, we uncovered #1 green and saw that there was well over an inch of solid ice laying under the 20+ inches of snow.
     Tuesday, Tolly brought in his father's Kubota estate tractor (that's what Bob calls them) to help us get into tight spots and take some of the weight off the greens.  This Kubota is an amazing machine, clearing a path from the back side of #1 green down to #8 green seemingly effortlessly and we were able to uncover #8 much faster than #1 the day before.
     Currently, we are uncovering the #1 PG by the pro shop and #18 green.  We have a few cart paths opened up and hope to get up to the driving range shortly so we can start working up there and get the range open before the course. 
     We will check back in later to let you know what were going to do about all the ice we've uncovered...
-Aaron  

Welcome to the "New" Wildflower Golf Course Turfgrass Operations:

     My name is Aaron Johnson and I am now the golf course superintendent at Wildflower Golf Course.  I am new to this whole "Blogging" thing and I will try to update this site as much as we can during the year to let everyone who wants to know what were doing out on the course. 
     First, I would like to share with you a little background information about myself:
     I started my golf course maintenance career at Cuyuna County Club in Deerwood, Minnesota while in high school.  Working there three summers taught me that running and operating a golf course isn't just mowing an over sized lawn like I'm sure many people believe. The time commitment that it takes to successfully run an established golf course is no small task and it takes many devoted employees all sharing a common goal to make that operation a success.
     After high school, I enrolled in the architectural program at NDSU and soon found myself leaning toward the landscape architecture program.  I learned of the Sports and Urban Turfgrass Management program my sophomore year and changed my major promptly after learning of the Major.  While attending NDSU, I was the assistant superintendent for a newly designed golf course in south Fargo named Osgood Golf Course.  I worked there under Victor Heitkamp for seven years and learned a great deal of what it takes to become a golf course superintendent. 
     In 2011, my wife, my daughter and I moved to Page, Arizona where I was the assistant superintendent at Lake Powell National Golf Course.  My time there was spent honing my skills on irrigation repair and management of cool-season grasses in an arid southwest climate.  In July of 2012 I became the Golf Course Superintendent and applied the knowledge that Rex Saddoris, the former Golf Course Superintendent, had taught me. 
     On February 25th, 2013 I became the head golf course Superintendent of Wildflower Golf Course here in Detroit Lakes.  I, along with the management team here at Fair Hills and Five Lakes Resort, are very optimistic about the future of Wildflower Golf Course.  Moving forward, I believe that we can make Wildflower Golf Course a beautiful destination for many years to come.  I am looking forward to this year and anticipate a great summer maintaining and improving the golf course.
     Please feel free to comment and email me any questions that you may have.  I can be reached anytime on the golf course or in my office and at aaron@wildflowergolfcourse.com
  Here's to a great season after a long winter!!!
-Aaron