Channel 7 ABC

Below is the link to the interview from Channel 7 News yesterday on water savings.  Hopefully this will be the end to my 10 minutes of fame. 


http://abc7.com/weather/golf-course-takes-steps-to-conserve-water/240906/

LA Daily News

Here is a link the article in the Sunday LA Daily News about water conservation in case you missed it.

 http://www.dailynews.com/environment-and-nature/20140802/woodland-hills-country-club-beats-par-for-water-conservation

Maintenance Day

Today is a very busy maintenance day on the course.  We are venting or aerifing the greens with 1/4 inch tines.

This allows water and air to get down to the roots, this will help the grass plants to better handle the stresses of our summer weather conditions. 

We are also verticutting and aerifing the fairways.

The verticutting reduces the thatch that builds up in the kikuyu, and will create a tighter and healthier grass plant.  We will verticut the fairways again an about a month. 

The aerifing of the fairways will reduce compaction and allow water to better penetrate the soil, reducing dry spots. 

 

The greens will be finished today, but the fairways will take most of the week to complete.  We will restrict the carts to the path this week to allow the fairways to heal better.  Please bear with us for this busy week as these procedures will improve the health of the golf course and improve playing conditions thoughout the year.

Tee Improvement Project

We have completed the leveling part of the tee leveling project, below are before and after photos of the first tee.  Next, we will begin installing the bronze yardage markers and finish up more concrete block work.

Fore The Golfer: Watering For Healthy Turf

Driving Range Tee

This week we took on the task of leveling and resodding the Driving Range Tee. This is what the tee looked like when we started.

We stripped the sod off on Tuesday, Wednesday we rototilled the tee, and blended in the transitions to the rough better than they were before. On Thursday we brought in an outside contractor to laser level the tee, below is a picture of his equipment in operation.

Today we brought in West Coast Turf to lay big rolls of hybrid bermuda, just like they laid the big rolls of kikuyu in the fairways.

We will reopen the new driving range tee in a couple weeks when the sod roots down and becomes firm.

Aerification Monday

Today we aerified the greens, so I thought I would give you a play by play on what and why we make a mess of the greens twice a year.  First of all, this is not our favorite thing to do, as it is a lot of work, and really messes up the greens for a couple weeks.  However it is a necessary evil.

 

 

We start by running the core aerifier over the greens.  This machine pulls plugs of thatch and compacted soil from the greens. The plugs are 5/8 across by 3.5 inches deep and are spaced a couple inches apart.

Then all the plugs are pushed to the edge of the green, picked up and hauled away.

Then we apply gypsum(calcium sulfate)and fertilizer.  The gypsum helps displace sodium in the soil. The fertilizer we applied today was 0-0-50(potassium sulfate) which is for heat, drought and wear tolerance.  We will continue to add potassium throughout the summer.  Last Monday we applied a balanced greens grade fertilizer containing 10 percent nitrogen, 4 percent phosphorus and 20 percent potassium to start growth and helps recover faster from the aerification process.

Next sand topdressing is applied at a rate to make sure all the holes are filled and there is extra to fill any low irregularities in surface smoothness on the greens.  Sand is used as it does not compact as much as soil based topdressings.  This allows for better air and water movement through the soil and deeper root depth.  Sand topdressing also helps reduce thatch on greens.  A build-up of thatch would prevent water from penetrating the surface, causing localized dry spots.

The sand is then dragged to move it into the holes and low spots.  This creates a smoother putting surface for the entire year.  We will continue daily dragging until the sand has worked into the soil and thatch of the turf.

Finally we water in the fertilizers and sand.  The water also helps work the sand into the soil and turf canopy as well as dissolves the fertilizer allowing it to be used by the turf plants and the gypsum allowing it to displace the salt particles in the soil.

All in all it is a long hard day of work beginning at 6:30 am and still going strong at 3:45 pm.  We should finish in the next couple of hours.  However, if these tasks were not performed in the spring and fall, the greens would suffer with compaction, reduced air and water movement, localized dry spots, and other additional stresses causing more fungal activity and loss of turf throughout the year.  So please bear with us the next couple of weeks while the greens recover, so the golf course can be enjoyed this summer.