Nov Dec 2011 Course Update

Hole 9

Wow, what a spectacular fall we have had on the course. If you were lucky enough to stay in the Harbour this fall instead of going down south to the Palm Desert you would have experienced some of the best playing conditions on the course all year!

Hole 3

This fall has been exceptionally nice with below average rainfall and temperatures. This has left the course in excellent shape and course is dryer today than it was in October. The colder than normal temperatures have slowed the growth of the turf which has only required 2 cuts on the fairways since October 31. Some years we have had to cut 3 times a week just to keep up.

View from top of 4
Aside from the occasional frost delay the golfers have had more opportunity to golf this fall than any fall in recent memory. I have elected to keep the course closed until the frost has lifted in order to reduce the damage cause from walking on frozen turf.

Hole 2

In early December I undertook the now annual irrigation system blow out. I rented a large compressor that allowed me to blow out all of the moisture from the system so that nothing is damaged from freezing. We started this procedure last winter and had really good results with almost no damage to the system over the winter.

In my time at Pender Harbour Golf Club I have never seen the course go into winter in this good of shape. As long as the weather cooperates this winter we should be looking at fantastic conditions come spring.

Hole 1

Turfgrass speedo is still my most important tool for managing turf growth after 4 years.

It wasn't the easiest year for growing grass , but the conditions were still pretty good. Almost 4 years ago exactly, I came up with the idea of comparing actual clipping yields to the "ideal" clipping yield or the clipping yield adjusted using the Growth Potential Model . Since then, it has proved to be a much more useful tool to manage growth than I originally thought . It has been almost a decade since I started making observations on plant health and playability and how it relates to the clipping yield. I have been constantly searching for ways to get the growth rate right as often as I can and this tool seems to be the best way I have seen so far, and might ultimately, be the best way going forward. To prove this point I will discuss in a future post, the success I've had with pest control in the past few years (for the most part (Not withstanding the times where I think my greens are dead but they actually aren't...thanks T)). Never needed less There are ...

Do you have enough?

I recently discussed how we can use fertilizer ratios to simplify how much fertilizer we apply to help us keep above the MLSN guidelines . When we get a soil test done it is a static amount of nutrients found in the soil. Even if you are above the MLSN guidelines at the time of testing, it doesn't guarantee that you will remain at or above the guidelines as the grass grows and consumes nutrients. There is math that you can use to determine exactly how much nutrient you need to apply to ensure that you remain at or above the MLSN guidelines. For many, this is much too complicated. For that reason I made a quick cheat sheet to help you determine how much of each nutrient you can expect to use each year based off a few different annual nitrogen rates. Nutrient use is based primarily on nitrogen use so the left 2 columns are a few different nitrogen rates. The columns for each nutrient are in PPM and are designed to help you look at your current soil test PPM (mehlich 3) and determin...

How to quantify nutrient content in liquid fertilizer

In a recent post, I discussed how it was actually cheaper to spray soluble vs granular fertilizer. What about if we use pre-mixed liquid fertilizer? How do we even figure out how much nutrient we are applying with pre-mixed liquid fertilizer? Before I learned that you could simply dissolve soluble fertilizer in water and apply it in a sprayer, I was a big user of pre-mixed liquid fertilizers. One of the issues I initially had was figuring out exactly how much of each nutrient I was applying. The math wasn't as straightforward is it was with granular fertilizers. It turns out, it's actually not that difficult but requires an extra step. First, we need to convert the liquid volume into a mass. Many products will have the product density displayed on the label or you can look in the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) for that information as well. No SDS? Should you be using products without an SDS? Even if this information isn't included on the label it is very easy to figure out. All ...

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