After a cold snap in late December, Old Man Winter decided to take a siesta and we have been left with a very mild winter. Way above normal warmth resulted in 60, 70, and even pushing 80 degree temperatures. Many plants have already broken dormancy including magnolias, daffodils, and forsythias. The cool season grass never entered full dormancy allowing us to keep mowing occasionally throughout the winter season. Unfortunately, the warmer temperatures have brought with them many wind storms. The Crew has been busy blowing off playing surfaces and picking up sticks, gumballs, pine cones, catalpa seed pods, and leaves on a daily basis to keep the course playable. Hopefully March will usher in cooler seasonal temperatures and slow down Mother Nature's springtime fury.
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| Mowing greens in February. |
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| Trailor full of sticks after a wind storm. |
The warm winter has allowed the agronomy team to get a head start on some important spring projects. Verticutting fairways has been completed about a month earlier than usual. This is a practice that was implemented in 2021 and has helped decrease the thatch layer and reduce compaction in the fairways. Verticutting consists of vertical rotating blades, which penetrate the surface at a depth up to 1". A significant amount of organic matter is brought up and picked up with a TC-125 John Deere sweeper. This procedure will help with the health of the fairway turf and create firmer conditions during the golf season. Next up will be verticutting tees.
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| Verticutting #18 fairway. |
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| TC-125 sweeper dumping the thatch into a cart. |
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| Verticutting tees and picking up the thatch. |
Dormant seeding has been completed in the rough. The abundant amount of trees that call WHCC home thin out many locations from shade and competing roots. This spring we overseeded to fill in these areas with a shade seed mixture. Thin rough spots in sunny locations received a turf-type tall fescue and perennial rye grass mixture. Over 1,000 lbs of dormant seed were applied to the rough this spring and should help to make a thicker stand once germination begins in April.
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Seeding #13 rough.
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The Grounds Department has been busy working on bunker drainage and refreshing many bunkers with new sand. The WHCC bunkers are over 20 years old and starting to show their age. Washouts are occurring with regularity, contaminating many low lying areas with topsoil. This soil clogs existing drain tile and every couple of years needs to be cleaned out and replaced with new tile and gravel. In the coming months we will be working with the Green Committee for possible solutions to the bunker washout issues.
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#9 green side bunker after a rainstorm. Water and topsoil washout to the bottom of the bunker. After time this clogs the drain tile causing these small ponds to occur.
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| Cleaning off drain tile in the bottom of #9 green bunker and replacing the clogged tile and gravel. |
An honor garden has been created to recognize some of WHCC's longtime employees with over 35 years of service. Some of the people recognized will include J.T. "Teach" Wilkerson (Clubhouse Employee), Erlene Ellis (wore many hats most recently Office Manager), James Wulkotte (grounds worker then long time Assistant Golf Course Superintendent 1981-2020), Lynn Thompson (Golf Course Superintendent 1986-2020), and Gene Samborsky (past Head Golf Professional). An outdoor table surrounded by flowering shrubs, perennials, and annuals was inserted into the fountain area. A plaque will follow that will include many of the WHCC "Hall of Fame" employees. In addition to recognizing these hard working individuals the area should be a great place for members to relax and enjoy the fountain and surrounding landscape. Also, new perennials were planted in the perennial garden adjacent to the honor garden across the circle driveway.
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| Creating the honor garden |
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| Installing the table-benches will be arriving soon. |
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| Planting the perennials/shrubs including limelight prime hydrangeas, azaleas, bluebeards, and salvia. The plants will continue to get bigger during the growing season. |
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| Completed garden. |
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| Mulching the tulip bed by the fountain area. Hopefully the temperatures cool down or the tulips will be blooming much earlier this season. |
Poa annua (annual bluegrass) is a grassy weed that has some positive and negative attributes. On the one hand it is a grass that thrives at lower mowing heights and is very hardy coming back year after year. Furthermore, on greens it tends to have better ball roll than most other turfgrass varieties (newer bentgrass varieties may be faster). Because of this some courses farther north have used poa annua as their preferred turf on putting greens (Oakmont Country Club has some of the fastest greens consisting of all poa annua varieties); however, during spring time seed production, ball roll is decreased because the seeds produce bumpier conditions. On the other hand, it is shallow rooted, has decreased heat tolerance, needs an abundant amount of moisture, is very susceptible to diseases, vulnerable to winter kill, and has a lighter green color than other cool season turf varieties. In addition poa is generally a weaker plant, meaning it needs more pesticides, fungicides, and fertilizer to keep it alive during the hot summer months. It is for these reasons that poa annua is not a desirable turfgrass for WHCC. However, because WHCC is an older course with numerous trees (poa annua thrives in the shade click here for more information) annual bluegrass flourishes here. This is the time of year that poa is easily noticed because of its abundant seed head proliferation.
This year we have made a couple changes to our agronomic program to combat annual bluegrass. On greens we have included a plant growth regulator called proxy to keep the flush of seed heads down thereby increasing green speed and trueness. In the fairways, after verticutting, we overseeded with newer bentgrass varieties to increase the overall bentgrass fairway population. The newer practices are in addition to other practices already in place such as summer PGR applications, continually overseeding greens and tees with newer bents, reducing water, and decreasing fertilization. Moving forward we need to think about eliminating some trees that are negatively impacting greens and implement an overall tree reduction program to continue to decrease the poa annua population.
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| The left side of #16 green with a heavy amount of poa annua. Poa is very susceptible to winter injury and this location was scorched by high winds and -10 degree temperatures during late December. Notice the yellow color-this is showing poa annua injury. |
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| Close up of #16 green winter injury on poa annua. The darker green turf is bentgrass while the poa is struggling to recover. |
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| The culprit for the increased poa annua in that location is the large pin oak to the left of the green. |
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| Overhead look at #16 green in the summertime. Notice the pin oak is shading 1/3 of the green on the left side. This is the reason for the poa thriving in this location. |
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| Difference between the new north bentgrass tee and the older practice tee with a heavy poa infestation. The tee on the left is planted with newer varieties of bentgrass and the tee on the right is a mixture of bentgrass and poa. The bentgrass is a darker green color. Also since bentgrass grows horizontally it is able to recover divots much faster than the clump type growth of poa annua. |
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| Divots on the south practice tee created in mid November filling in with poa annua. To save on cost the soil from the old practice tee was reused. The old tee had a significant amount of annual bluegrass because of shade and drainage issues. Seed in the soil from those plants is now germinating in favorable sites on the south tee. |
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This is a good example why shutting down the practice tees earlier is desirable. This divot was taken in mid November. Poa annua germinates mostly in mid fall to early winter. The divots were filled in with sand and bentgrass; however, this time of year germination favors poa annua. This has resulted in the divot being filled in with almost entirely annual bluegrass by early spring. Everything growing inside the red circle is poa annua. This reiterates the importance of closing the practice tees earlier if less poa annua is desired.
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| Poa annua dying in the summer left of #9 fairway. This is a heavily shaded location. Poa is shallow rooted and needs a tremendous amount of moisture to survive in the high evaporation summer months. Even with adequate moisture when soil temperatures rise close to 90 the plants will die. |
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| Close up of poa annua seed heads |
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| Poa annua seed heads on a putting green. These seeds make a bumpier green thereby slowing down green speed. |
As we move deeper into the spring, daily maintenance will take more of the crew's time as we look forward to another successful golf season to begin at WHCC.
Brad Piecuch
Grounds Superintendent
