Page 11 - GM spring 2024

Curiosity
As a golf course Superintendent, I also love the fact that I work closely with nature. It only makes sense that most of my trials are working toward improvements that are environmentally beneficial. This article will touch on some of my successful trials over the years.
I believe standing still is going backwards so I am always experimenting and trying new things. It can be as small of a change as raising the surrounds heights of cut to improve water management as well as play benefits, to trying different fertilizer combinations and application experiments. I will explain where I work and the challenges I face. I will then cover a few of the successful experiments I have tried. I hope that you will find some of my results helpful at your workplace and if not, maybe at least inspire you to try something new.
STARVING GREENS = SUCCESS
The Skeena Valley Golf & Country Club is located in Terrace, BC. This town is just below the Alaskan panhandle and inland of Prince Rupert. It is close enough to the coast to receive 40” of precipitation each year, but also situated in an area that can experience intense heat and drought conditions during the summer.
We only have two ponds for irrigation that we use and an input supply of only 25,000 gallons per day. This means we are working with a total annual irrigation supply of 7-9 million gallons of irrigation water per seven- month season. This is not a lot of irrigation water per season and conservation is a must. When we are not experiencing hot conditions and conserving water, we tend to go to the other extreme and are dealing with constant rain. We have been hot and dry enough to be on greens and tee watering only as early as May 24th and we have also been cool and wet enough to have microdochium pressure every month of the year.
What have I tried and what have I learned? First off, in my experience, letting the grass go into winter starving has given me the best overwinter success. It is scary to watch the grass brown off so early but the stress appears to harden the plant off and induce a stronger dormancy. We can get some extreme winter conditions, so the grass has to be as protected as
ELIGIBLE ARTICLE
GORDON WITTEVEEN AWARD
possible here. Any year the greens have gone into winter green and healthy we have had greater decline during winter. Starving equals success.
AERATE TO HELP WITH WINTER KILL
On the rare occasion you find you get winter kill/ice damage, (this happened once when it snowed before I could get my overwinter spray down) the best solution I have found is to aerate the green. Remove the cores from the damaged areas and save the cores from the good areas. Use these good cores to push into the open holes of the damaged areas. The ice damage not only kills the grass but appears to kill the soil microorganisms as well. The cores from the healthy areas not only give new seed a proper microclimate to take hold but also help the soil microbiology as well.
Be prepared to be laughed at by golfers as you push cores into holes but trust me, it increases recovery time dramatically. Faster recovery requires less input of chemicals and fertilizers and a quicker recovery makes golfers happy. As an aside, while recovering, I find it important to topdress a few feet around the hole every time you change pins to help keep complaints down.
GreenMaster • CGSA • 11