Fusariummy

In the first part of this series I talked about how I don't like to spend more than 60% of my labor resources on scheduled maintenance practices like mowing, rolling and raking. I find that if I spend more that 60% of my labor force on these tasks that we don't have time for the other stuff. This also helps ensure that we set a realistic maintenance standard that lets us easily work within our current level of resources. I can then use the remaining 40% of my labor to do everything else. There's a lot more to greenkeeping than just mowing so even though we can easily handle the main part of the operation with 60% of our labor, we need to be as efficient as possible with the remaining 40% to ensure that we can still get it all done. This requires a combination of finesse and brute force where brute force will require more resources but will get the job done now and finesse will generally use less resources but you might have to wait for the opportune time to do the job. To ...

Project management 101 is all about the bottleneck. A bottleneck is "one process in a chain of processes, such that its limited capacity reduces the capacity of the whole chain. The result of having a bottleneck are stalls in production, supply overstock, pressure from customers and low employee morale. [1] There are both short and long-term bottlenecks. Short-term bottlenecks are temporary and are not normally a significant problem." - wikipedia   Everyone knows that you can drink more beer from a cup than a bottle. Reduce the bottleneck and achieve more! In my last post ( Turfenomics: Productivity Part 1; Productivity Starts With You ) I discussed how you need to ensure that your production goals are realistic for the available resources. In this post I will discuss the various ways we can increase productivity by being aware of maintenance bottlenecks. Often the most obvious and painful bottlenecks are short term. It kills me when staff don't show up for work or the a...

Productivity starts with you. Productivity is loosely defined as how much work you can do in a given amount of time. It's a measure of efficiency. For mowing we measure this in ha/hr (in all but 2 countries on Earth). Production is what you can do with a given productivity and level of resources or how much grass you can cut with one person who has a certain level of productivity. We don't start early because it's fun, we start early because it's more productive and a great way to catch the occasional bitching sunrise. Every superintendent knows this. While every single superintendent I have met understands the economics of golf course maintenance to some degree, I find it useful to write this stuff down so you can reflect on it and maybe be more deliberate in how you address these problems. Here's my poorly educated but somewhat experienced attempt at addressing productivity in golf maintenance. Production Productivity During the last few crazy months I have done a...

In my two previous posts I talked about how one might want to fertilize and plan maintenance during these times of high uncertainty. It is my opinion that reacting strongly very quickly with the ability to reduce restrictions as time goes on and uncertainty decreases will be the best way forward for many facilities. Here I will discuss some hypothetical situations and things I have learned from years of irrigating golf courses by myself. Also, please allow me to venture into the hypothetical realm for a bit because it seems that most resources that I have read are very conservative and still in denial of what we might be facing here. I hope I'm wrong and that no one needs to use any of the things I'm about to describe. For many, they will possibly have almost no resources for the coming year and this could be made worse if this drags on for more than a few weeks or months. While most are currently concerned about getting the spring grass growth cut, what will happen when drough...

While browsing social media it is apparent that there are many different approaches being taken to manage courses during the #Covid-19 outbreak. I have also received many questions from other greenkeepers about why I have cut back so hard so quickly. This post isn't designed to suggest that one approach is better than another but is more of a place to discuss the various options and how they might play out in these uncertain times. Right now there is a LOT of uncertainty. Will we be allowed to maintain our golf courses? Will we be allowed to open up? When can we open back up if we are closed? Will anyone have money to golf if we are open? No one has the answers to any of these questions because at this time, we simply do not know. In the coming year, a lot of courses are going to go out of business and it is my hope that the number of courses that close is a low as possible. In SAR, part of what I do is predict the future. It's pretty easy to do actually. You plan for the worst...

Stacking PGRs can help slow growth where it is no longer needed Over the years I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about growth rates and fertilizer. Through various techniques such as the MLSN and measuring clipping yield I have been able to reduce the amount of fertilizer required on my golf course. The purpose of this post is to help others by laying out some of the things that I have learned and hopefully I can help you prevent unnecessary hardship during these difficult times. During the global shutdown due to the #COVID-19 epidemic turf managers will be faced with decisions on how they will manage their courses with minimal staff and resources.  Further adding to the issues we face is the uncertainty for how long this shutdown will last. Will it be a few weeks or will is last for the remainder of the season? I think it's better for us to plan for a complete shutdown for the remainder of 2020 and hope that this isn't the case. This will allow us to plan to keep the c...

Last Friday (March 13) I was thinking that removing our bunker rakes and ball washers was a bit extreme. On Monday my crew and I had a brainstorming session and came up with the idea of raising cups to reduce the need for golfers to touch anything other than their ball on the course. raised cups were an attempt to keep the course safe On Tuesday it was clear that we would be closing and on Thursday (March 19) we closed the doors to the golf club potentially for the rest of the season. First of all, I want to thank our board of directors for the strong and clear leadership during this difficult time. I have no doubt that closing the course early was and is the best thing for us to do. By closing down I can shift my focus from trying to keep my staff and members safe to figuring out how I might maintain a golf course by myself for potentially the rest of the year. I wasn’t prepared for the blow-back I would receive for being part of a club that closed before we were forced to and for sug...