Course Update and Golf Industry Show

This past week I attended the Golf Industry Show where I sought out education on specific subjects as well as see what new things that are being unveiled. In the next few paragraphs I will discuss the classes that I attended and what benefits we can see from using that information on the golf course.

My first initial class that I attended was called High Performance Golf Course Management, this class gave more insight on hiring and training so you can have an effective staff. Some examples were properly interviewing techniques and creating a strong hiring process with strict followed procedures. Other topics that were stressed were employee training and its importance, developing standards for the golf course and emphasizing that planning is very important in achieving your goals. Plan your work and work your plan.

After that class I hustled over to Selection, Establishment and Maintenance of Grasses for Native Roughs and other Reduced Maintenance Areas, we discussed a number of different native grasses that could be used in specific parts of the United States and what the benefits that you could see other than aesthetics. We also covered establishment and timing techniques to properly grow in and yes maintain these areas. Although native these areas would require some kind of maintenance to keep out invasive and exotic species and they are not maintenance free.

The next morning I prepared myself for Zero Waste Golf - A Low-Cost Model to improve Your Facility, We talked about ways that we could save energy through the use of LED lights, something that we have been doing at the shop for the past two years and our club house just this year. The importance of utilizing equipment through the highest efficiency possible, one example is switching all electric motors whether they power HVAC or our irrigation pump house to VFD. We do have a new pump station slated for install this month. What VFD stands for is variable frequency drive, and what this does is instead of using a fixed speed system, VFD will vary its speed according to the demands that are needed there by reducing electricity needed.  Other topics discussed were producing your own compost through discarded food and finding rebates in your state.

Next class, Preparing for and Managing Turf through Water Shortages and Drought,  this topic is more and more discussed as water is becoming increasingly scarce in certain parts of the world as recent news headlines have stated what California could be facing. Topics discussed were ways to communicate the effects of the drought to the membership that brown is okay and lush and green could be a thing of the past in some areas, using wetting agents to make water wetter or move into the soil profile more efficiently and developing emergency action plans if the government demanded water restrictions.

Finally as my week came to a close I had two more classes to take, The impact of your Spray Tank Water on Pesticide Performance, in a nut shell pH can be a contributed factor for reduced efficacy of certain plant protectants and generally having your water tested on a regular basis so that hardness and other contributing factors keep the plant protectants working properly. The last class, Fundamentals of Foliar Fertilization discussed the movement of nutrients into the turf grass plant via foliar applications. A good example is a granular product that is broad cast applied to the soil and eventually taken up through the roots while foliar applications is spraying the nutrients onto the plant to be taken up through the leaves and roots if lightly watered in. This way can more efficient at times by applying light amounts on a regular basis.

During the week of my absence the staff was busy installing trees to screen the fence on 18, picking up limbs on the course from the recent ice storm and preparing our wash pad to meet the Audubon standards that we have achieved recently. They also took the time to organize the shop on inclement weather days and continued to work on their selected projects. Our bunker renovation was held up again but at the end of the week they picked up again working on #8. The question that I have been asked is will this be ready by April 1st?  Honestly its just a little early to predict that, but we are hopeful if we can get a good two week stretch with out weather related delays this could put us back on track.

wash pad prepping

16th in Maryland, 877th in the World

The title means we have just been confirmed that we have attained Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary status for the golf course. I really want to thank my staff Mike Otstot, Zach Anderson, Ben Baker and Geofferey Gibson for putting in great effort with this project. Here is a little recap of what we had to accomplish in order to full fill the requirements.

1. Environmental Planning, The concrete foundation that we will base all of our programs wants and needs before we move forward for the staff, golfers and wildlife.

2.Wildlife and Habitat Management, Will make us understand the wildlife that we have on the golf course, increasing the naturalized areas and creating a wildlife inventory. 

3.Integrated Pest management, The goal here is to reduce our inputs in to the environment through Cultural Practices, Pest Monitoring and Management and Maintenance Facility and Pesticide Safety.

4.Water Conservation,  This also would include the amount of water that we use to irrigate with and that our system is running efficiently with proper distribution and no leaks. It has always been my number one concern that we do not abuse the water that is given to us.

5.Water Quality Management, Water has become an ever so increasing commodity. It is extremely important that we have preventative and management controls in protecting our water sources. Some example that we currently employ are no-input zones or buffer zones near our water bodies, these help minimize run-off, potential drift and erosion with quarterly testing for nitrates and phosphates in the water. This area really dives deeper into the management of our ponds as well.

6.Outreach and Education, Once completed with the previous steps its now time to let the public and golfers know how we are doing and what steps we are taking to manage our environmental impact. We do this by education, displays of wildlife, kid activities and more.

As you can see there are a lot of steps to take and for us the most cumbersome was the Wildlife and Habitat Management section. Once this was complete the rest fell in line with what we were already doing. We go through these rigorous programs to improve the environment on the golf course but for me personally it is the message that I would like for every one to hear, that we do care and we just proved it.

Now for some project updates, the bunker work is picking up today for the first time in a couple of weeks. The weather for the next week and a half does not look very good but we are hopeful to have #9 prepped with gravel in the next couple of days. So far we have still have a lot of snow on the ground and we shifted to complete some work at the shop. We are improving our wash pad area and adding a water line to fill our mix tank. By permanently having a water source that is piped we can fill faster and not have to worry about a hose laying in the way. Our trees for screening the fence on 18 have arrived and those are planned to go in next week. We have just been given the green light to proceed with our second phase of the storm damage tree plantings, 19 to be exact. Our start date for this is mid February weather permitting.

water line trench

Delivered Leyland Cypress trees

Water quality testing and Ground Water

Yesterday we learned that we have successfully completed our Wildlife and Habitat Management and our Water Conservation segments for the Audubon Certification with our Chemical Use and Reduction and Safety as well as our Water Quality pending. Once those are complete this leaves us with our last segment titled Education and Outreach. 

Our water quality testing involved a kit that we purchased to help us with this requirement. We took samples of water entering the golf course property to leaving the golf course property and it was quite interesting what we found. From at first glance you could easily tell how good the water was leaving the property compared to entering and from our test for example our nitrate and phosphate levels were much lower leaving the golf course, two important nutrient factors that Maryland is trying to reduce going into the Chesapeake Bay.  We feel very good about that and will continue to do our part for the environment.

Testing kit

The cup on the far right is the incoming water from the
homes, while the cup on the far left is the water leaving
the property. 

Will you look at that! Water on the far left is much cleaner
leaving the golf course. 

Another note of news today is we have been certified in the Ground Water Guardian Program. This is a similar program like the Audubon program for golf courses but its main focus is protecting and conserving the ground water. We received a plaque to show off in the club house and a sign to mount out side. For more information please go to www.groundwater.org. 

Mix tank build

Through out the season we apply light amounts of nutrient packages to the turf grass to help with recovery and stress. This can be a long process each time that we schedule this. For example when we apply a nutrient package to the fairways it requires us to make (5) 300 gallon fairway tanks, each one must have the correct added materials to make up that package to cover over 30 acres. On average it can take us about 20-30 minutes to fill up with a total of 4-5 hours to actually apply the nutrient package. You can see there is a good portion of our time being spent mixing, roughly less than 2 hours combined.  If we can minimize the amount of time it takes us to mix these together we could potentially see a savings in fuel cost and most importantly move on to the next task for that day very quickly. How do we improve this situation? The answer is we build a mix tank to hold the required gallons to spray the fairways in one tank, remember it takes us 5 tanks at 300 gallons for a total of 1500 gallons. The short of it is we will only mix one time and each time the fairway sprayer needs to be filled up, they will back up to fill from the large mix tank and then off to the next appropriate hole.

 Quick, easy and most importantly safe.

The large tank will hold the 1500 gallons, the small tank to the left
will hold our Iron that we use on a regular basis. The small device
in front of the large tank mixes the appropriate products
together then shoots them into the large tank. 

This is one of the fairway sprayers that we use, and it only
holds 300 gallons at a time.