June 2024
The turf care busy season
Managing golf turf in south Florida is a year round deal. There is no “off-season” and there is no time when things are relaxed. In friendly conversations with new friends and acquaintances, many people upon learning what I do for a living, inevitably say something to the effect that it is summer now so things must be slowing down for you. I always smile and take full advantage to educate a new person as to why the opposite is true for golf superintendents, and then they are usually looking for someone less intense to chat with. It’s a misunderstood operation somewhat, mainly because we do most of our work before anyone shows up to the course, or when the course is closed, and contrary to popular belief is not comparable to maintaining a home lawn. So what happened in June?
For starters, there were 170 different jobs assigned and completed during the month. Greens were our most intensively managed group occupying about 21% of all labor. We didn’t lose much productivity due to weather during the course closure, as the heavy downpours stayed south of Vero. Our monthly rain total as of today sits at 5.49” bringing our yearly total to 15.45” still well below average six months into the year.
Highlights over the last 30 days
Hosted the Florida State Amateur Championship June 6 - June 9. A fantastic experience for all involved and we are pleased to report that the feedback we received from players was overwhelmingly positive. The course played firm and fast and the weather cooperated fully. Jimmy Ellis from Atlantic Beach, Florida shot a final round 64 to claim the title at -16. An incredible score considering the course was setup at over 7,400 yards.
Turf Team during Tournament Week Greens: all putting surfaces were fertilized, verticut two directions, topdressed, aerified, brush rolled, and topdressed and rolled some more. Current height of cut is .135 as we carefully monitor recovery. We will gradually lower heights over the next couple of weeks to tighten up texture and improve green speeds.
Verticutting/Aerifying/Topdressing greens
Tees: similar procedures were completed on tees. We verticut the tees very aggressively followed by topdressing and a hollow tine aerification. We have about 3 acres of tees where this was completed. Recovery on tees has been positive and we are happy with their current health. Height of cut on tees is at .350
Fairways: in order to achieve desired playability on fairways we attempt to pull as much organic residue (thatch) out as possible. This year we employed a variety of processes that looked like this:
Terra Rake fairways
The terra rake is pulled behind a tractor to remove thatch and stand up the turfgrass. A simple, yet undeniably awesome cultivation tool. Circle mow fairways down to .400
Verticut fairways with a large scale Verticutter called a VC 90 (VC 40 is what you see in the video above used for greens/tees - the 90 is a similar tool just with larger blades, wider spacing, and more power).
Vacuum thatch from fairways.
Circle mow fairways a second time.
Terra Rake fairways a second time followed by another circle mow.
Topdress fairways. This year we used 860 tons of topdressing sand across 35 acres of fairways.
Aerify fairways behind sand with a 3/4 inch hollow tine. Drag fairways and irrigate with a 20-0-5 liquid fertilizer injected into irrigation.
Fairway work - circle mowing, topdressing, etc.
Collars/Approaches: similar procedures were conducted on our collars and approaches, except we did fraze mow the collars about 1 meter out from our greens. We do this annually to remove “collar dams” which build up from topdressing operations. Without this removal water can become trapped on greens, and also “turtle humps” begin to form at the transition of collar to green negatively affecting playability. We appreciate your understanding as these areas continue to recover.
Other work completed includes:
Removed about 25 dead viburnum from the parking lot. Added additional irrigation to parking lot to prevent plants from dying. Added 25 new viburnum to replace dead shrubs
Parking lot plant removal, adding irrigation Verticut and topdressed clubhouse lawns
Applied COMAND compost to dry/weak fairway trouble spots
Fraze mowed and core aerified the driving range tees to remove thatch and obtain smoothness to these high play areas. Fraze mower video below -
Core aerified the driving range fairway and target greens as well as our cart staging area.
Began plugging contamination in putting greens on number 3, 9, 12. Continually plugging areas where we sustained minor mechanical damage during aerification/verticutting. We had a complication with our ProCore 648 on number 1 and sustained some light damage to the front of the green. Expect this area to be fully recovered within the next 3-4 weeks.
Applied Ronstar plus fertilizer to 155 acres of turf behind our cultural practices. This application will feed our turfgrass, while providing 90 days of preventative weed suppression.
Ronstar plus fertilizer loaded and ready. We use a GPS guided truck for this spread to ensure accuracy and proper application rate. Slit injected ChipCo Choice (Fipronil) across 40 acres of tees, fairways, approaches. This will control mole crickets and fire ants in these areas for two years
Mole cricket nymphs and adult. Mole crickets are non native and considered the most destructive turfgrass insect pest in Florida. Sprayed out natural areas on holes 1, 3, 13, 15, 18. Added sand to number 1 natural area.
String trimmed and cleaned all bunkers. Still some cleaning left of a few bunkers we will be working on removing weeds and grass from bunkers over the next two weeks.
Edged and cleaned all drains, fairway and greens irrigation heads.
Conducted a host of fertility and pesticide applications to greens/tees/fairways to protect these areas from biotic and abiotic stress, and to stimulate growth for recovery.
Sprayed out over 15 acres of torpedograss invasion across the property. Torpedograss is a perennial weed that is troublesome to control. Each year we engage in an aggressive suppression program to slow the spread of this challenging pest. Over the last five years we have significantly reduced the population of this weed, but it requires multiple bi weekly applications.
Hosted a demonstration for an autonomous fairway mower. I believe this will be the future of mowing in golf course maintenance and have personally seen much reduction in the limitations of these machines over the last five years. We currently use GPS guided manned sprayers and are looking to move to AI mowers in the future for a portion of our turfgrass under management. This unit is an unmanned fairway mower that we tried on our par 3 course. The cost of the machine is $160,000
Over the course of the next 30 days expect to see our team working on a host of maintenance projects including -
Spraying out and resodding areas of invasive St. Augustine and Zoysiagrass in various locations around the property.
Removing Celebration bermudagrass that has heavily encroached on our putting greens specifically on holes number 12, 13, 14, 15.
COMAND topdressing to weak/overly sandy soil areas in the fairways
Continual cleaning/spraying/raking of natural areas on holes 1, 3, 13, 15, 18 to keep overgrowth to a minimum.
A lot of spot spraying of troublesome weeds including goosegrass, tropical signalgrass to keep weed growth out! Even with protection from pre emergent herbicides we will still get breakthrough.
A quick recognition for golf course equipment manager Todd Frazier and our assistant equipment manager Fortino Vargas. They are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of our $2.8 million fleet of vehicles and specialty equipment. Additionally, during the course closure our cutting units (reels) undergo tremendous stress and wear from circle mowing and mowing over areas that have been verticut/topdressed/and aerified. We have over 60 cutting units that have to be carefully ground and maintained regularly. It is not an exaggeration to say that without the hard work of these two individuals our operation simply would not be able to succeed.
Our next course closure is scheduled for July 22 - 25. During this closure we will verticut and aerify the putting greens a second time. Lightly verticut the tees and fairways. Solid tine aerify collars and approaches with light topdressing.
Thank you for checking out our operation, and for all of the nice comments related to the golf course. We are blessed with a dedicated team of 30 individuals committed to keeping our club well conditioned and successful. If you have any questions or thoughts related to our golf course maintenance practices please feel free to reach out to me at any time.
Dustin Naumann
GC Superintendent