An Insight to the Leaf Madness

Here's a few photos and videos that capture the mass amounts of leaves that fall each year at Pike Lake, both on the golf course and in the trailer park.  It's a long grueling process each fall. It not only involves keeping playing areas clean, but also getting RID of the leaves on the golf course.

As stated in a previous post, the leaves are either mulched, vacuumed up and dumped in a compost site, or they are blown to treed areas that are out of play where they can naturally compost without affecting play.

The leaf clean up process typically begins in late September with a couple minor areas of debris to manage.  But it quickly escalates into being the main priority of the maintenance staff. It's such an overwhelming amount of leaves that no time can be spared or the battle will be a losing one.  The leaf clean up usually lasts until snow fall and it most often carried on the following spring.  This season, however, the weather was very cooperative and we were able to put the golf course to bed very clean with hardly a leaf on the property!

The process is long and occurs in the rainy, colder season - autumn.  It can be discouraging for the maintenance staff because it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  As quick as we tidy as area, it's covered with leaves again. So we'd like to send a big thanks to our staff and anyone who helped contribute to the success of the leaf clean up this season. It will pay dividends in the spring!

 Note the amount of leaves still on the trees!

Frost Delays

The Men’s Fall Scramble is in the books at Pike Lake for 2015.  That means the golfing season is unfortunately coming to an end.  Hopefully there’s some nice days left these last couple of weeks for a few more rounds of fall golf at Pike Lake.Fall golf in our climate brings on the possibility of frost – and with frost comes frost delays at clubs all across the country.  Everyone knows that when there’s frost on the ground it means no one can play golf.  But there are a lot of people who don’t understand why.  Why can’t we go hit a little white ball around the course while there’s a bit of frost out there?  I shall explain.

Frost is basically frozen dew.  When the temperature is right – water will freeze.  The water within the plant cells is just as susceptible to freezing as the dew is on the outside.  When pressure is applied to the frozen grass, the cells within the plant burst – and it can result in permanent death of the grass.

 If someone walks on or drives on grass that’s covered in a heavy frost – the grass will turn a blackish, purplish, blue color.  Grass turns the same color when it bruises that you and I do.  If the damage is severe enough, it will eventually turn a tan color and will have no chance of recovery.  These two photos show examples of some frosty grass that was driven over and walked over.  

                      

Since it’s in the rough and the damage is isolated – these areas will most likely recover.  The rough is cut much higher than the grass on the putting greens.  The greens are our prize possession.  The greens are delicate and any damage incurred from frost will be permanent.  And as this video will explain – there’s a lot of traffic on each putting green from golfer’s footsteps!

Once the frost has lifted ( or burned off! ) the maintenance crew still needs a head start on the golfers to get some daily to do’s finished such as cut the greens or change the pin locations.  So please be patient during frost delays!!  In case you don’t believe me - here’s a video from the USGA summarizing what I’ve just explained.  And if you don’t believe in the USGA then call the R&A.