Skip to main content

Fairway Bumps

The fairways at Pender Harbour are notoriously bumpy. When the course was constructed the forest was cleared and buried or burned under the current fairways. Over the years the buried wood has decayed causing the soil to settle in these locations.

Since 2005 we have been working to smooth out the worst areas of the fairways. Our old process was to lift the sod on a large (300 m2) area and smooth the soil then re-lay the sod. This method of smoothing worked really well but is very time and labor intensive. With our old crew of 5, I estimated that it would take us 40 years to fix all the bumpy areas of our fairways.


Typical pothole in a fairway caused by decaying
wood and organic matter.

As we now have a crew of 3 we have changed our approach to the bumpy fairways. Firstly we have begun to embrace the bumps. The bumpy fairways have become a part of the character of the course. Locals know where the bad spots are and play to avoid these areas. It is also very apparent when inter-club matches are hosted at Pender Harbour that our members are very good at hitting shots from lies above and below their feet. These skills give our members an advantage over other golfers who are used to smooth fairways.
Finished Hole topdressed in sand.
We have also changed the way that we are going to tackle the bumps on the fairways. Instead of tackling large chunks we are going to tackle the worst of the worst bumps. These are the bumps that will throw you from your golf cart, swallow your golf ball, and damage our mowers. We have begun to lift just these small isolated "holes" and fill them with soil then re-lay the sod. A team of two people can easily fill the really bad "holes" on one fairway in a day. We will continually be working on the bumps whenever we have time. This allows us to not have to commit to huge projects and makes it easier for our small crew. The results will also be more apparent and widespread as we are able to cover more ground.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

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
Read more

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
Read more

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
Read more