July 15, 2014
After a harsh winter, Mother Nature has blessed us with a
summer full of warm days, cool nights and plenty of precipitation. It’s not very often a heavy rain in the
middle of July is unwelcomed...knock on wood.
The new tee deck on #11 has sown in quite nicely. To date it has been rolled several times,
topdressed twice and mowed three times.
Mulch was laid as an entrance path to the tee for both golfers and
maintenance staff. The mulch matches the
surrounding scenery much better than the gravel. The tee deck is still on schedule to open for
play mid August. Some fill has been
dumped and shaped on #9 where the new forward tee is set to be built. Apologies for the conditions of the temporary
tee. If the weather co-operates, the new
forward tee on 9 will be completed within the next couple weeks and it will
receive similar preparation techniques as the tee on 11. Once the sod is in place on each of the new
tees, it takes roughly 7 weeks of ideal conditions before it is able to
withstand the stresses of golf.
You may have noticed “slice” lines and sand on the putting surfaces throughout the summer. The proper terminology for these cultural practices on the greens is verticutting, and topdressing. Verti- meaning the use of vertical blades set to a specific height to gently carve slice lines in the surface. This practice promotes new lateral growth, thins out excess surface organic matter (thatch) and provides a channel for the topdressing material to fall in to. A frequent, light dusting of sand on the greens helps dilute the thatch, heal ball marks and keeps the greens rolling true and firm. When combined, a regular verticut and topdress program is the #1 technique used by turf managers to speed up their putting greens. Ideally this process is completed once every 2 weeks to improve playing conditions. But due to the busy tee sheet at Pike Lake, we plan verticut and topdress days around the schedule to minimize the disturbance to golfers.
A similar technique is used on the bentgrass tees and
fairways. At Pike Lake, the new nine
tees/fairways, tees #1 and #17 are all comprised of bentgrass. Bentgrass produces vegetative stolons that
grow laterally. This growth habit
produces the “mat” sensation under your feet.
This mat, or thatch is described as partially decomposed organic matter
consisting of old roots, shoots and leaves.
It’s a golf course superintendent’s nemesis. The aerating, verticitting, topdressing and
rolling done on golf courses is done in large part to reduce thatch. Thatch impedes water and nutrient
penetration, halts oxygen to the root zone and houses turf pests such as
diseases and insects.
This photo shows a
profile of the sod lifted from the old forward tee on #11. There’s roughly 1.25 inches of thatch ( shown
by the red line) between the grass blades and the rootzone (soil). One day prior to lifting the sod it rained
over 1.5 inches. The soil below the
thatch was bone dry after the heavy rain.
Thatch acts much like a sponge.
It soaked up the 1.5 inches of rain and basically zero precipitation
reached the rootzone. You can imagine
how hard it would be for an irrigation head to penetrate the thatch if 1.5
inches of rain isn’t able to do the trick.
There’s a reason they still build thatch roofs. 
A slicer was used on
#4 tees, #16 tees and # 12 black deck. A
lot of organic matter was removed from the tees using this piece of equipment
and you can still see the slice marks in the tees. These tees were chosen as test plots to see
how quickly they will recover and if the depths of the slicer were sufficient.
More bentgrass tees will be sliced open in the near future and some fairways
will also be sliced open this fall to remove excess thatch.
