The first signs of spring have begun to show! The cherry trees behind the 14th green are starting to bloom their beautiful magenta flowers. On the golf course, the grounds staff has done the first cuts on all of our playing surfaces, mulched the clubhouse landscaping and completed spring bunker maintenance. As we wait for warmer days and growing grass the team will begin to get ahead of our early season agronomy practices. Tees will be aerated this week, but remember we are not aerating the greens until mid-June, the rough and fescue areas will receive their first round of pre-emergent herbicides, and we will be slicing the fairways in the coming weeks. It is always such a joy for us to see golfers coming back to the course after a long winter! Thank you for all your support, and please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. A quick update on the status of the golf course. My team has begun to switch gears and start preparing the golf course for an early spring. The greens have received significant inputs this spring to prepare them for opening. They have been verticut, topdressed, and rolled, they will not be aerated early this spring. There will be a light aeration to the greens as needed early in the Summer (mid- June). We will update with specifics of that process as we get closer. The staff has been busy cleaning up the golf course as well as beginning our Spring maintenance program on the bunkers. Our hope is to have the greens open and a presentable golf course by mid-March. The current long range forecast has the first week of March extremely cold and a possible snow storm, but things look to be warming up after that week. Hopefully, with the luck of the Irish we have a great golf course by St. Patrick’s Day. Winter is a busy time for the grounds department. We have a smaller full time staff that works through the colder months completing improvements on the golf course, servicing equipment and accessories, taking care of snow, and creating agronomic programs for the upcoming season. This winter we have removed several trees from the golf course, including 20+ tree of heaven (the host plant for Japanese lantern flyes) from around the ninth green. The staff have worked on all the bunkers. Specifically all new sod was added to the surrounds of the number nine complex and the small front greenside bunker on number eight has been modified so that the sand line is visible from the approach. It is no longer a blind hazard. Additionally, extra attention has been paid to the functionality of the maintenance building, in an effort to maximize the efficiency of the full staff next season. This winter has also brought significant changes to the grounds staff. I am thrilled to tell you that long time leads assistant superintendent Jim O’Brien has moved on to be the golf course superintendent at Bellwood Country Club. Our other assistant Chris Toporski became the superintendent at Lulu Country Club earlier this past fall. We have hired two excellent replacements for our assistant superintendents; Brian Reardon, and Travis Bono are eager to be part of Rivercrest and bring with them significant experience and expertise. Finally, I would like to update you on the status of the golf course. This winter has been a strange one even for our region. We have had a pattern of extreme cold followed by warm and wet. This has caused our soils to stay frozen just below the surface during warm spells and with additional rain all of that moisture is trapped at the top, creating a very muddy mess. Thankfully, the extended forecast is promising, and I believe that the golf course will be open this week, with the greens still close. We are hoping for an early spring too! This morning we were able to finish aerating the last of the greens. Now all of the playing surfaces have been aerated and are prepared for winter. Thank you so much to the staff members from other departments that came out this week to help us finish up the green's process. This fall aeration process will help insure an excellent spring golfing season on 2020. Thank you!!! Working with the weather is a constant challenge in golf course maintenance. This morning we have no frost, so we were able to start aerating right away. However, there is now a forecast of heavy rain this afternoon and evening, this has augmented our plan to do all the fairways in one shot, instead we are focusing this morning on the finishing the back nine. I will be updating you more as the day goes on..... The wet weather of the past few weeks has forced us to modify some of our aeration plans. We will be bringing in a company to assist us with fairway aeration next Thursday, November 7th. We will unfortunately need to keep the course closed that morning, as we work to process and clean up the aeration plugs on our 25 acres of fairways. The process and goals will remain the same, however; with their additional equipment, we will be able to finish all the remaining fairways in just over a day. We will still be pulling up soil and creating a natural composting system that will improve the chemical, physical, and biological conditions of our fairways. I will be updating the blog over the course of that day, as we work. Thank you in advance for your understanding for this inconvenience as we work to improve the golf course for years to come.
The grass range tee is now closed for the season. Last week’s frosts have begun to push our bermuda grass into dormancy, and it is critical that we minimize the traffic it receives from now until next spring. Finally, we have scheduled our final greens aeration for November 18-20th, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This process will be similar to what we did in August. We will be removing a core and filling the holes with topdressing sand. Our current plan to to do several back nine greens Monday morning before the golfers get to the holes, then on Tuesday get as many greens done as possible before nightfall, and use Wednesday for wrapping things up. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. Fall aeration has begun in earnest. Last week we were able to aerate all of the tee boxes for the final time this season. Today, we began to aerate the fairways. We are using coring tine to pull up soil and create a natural composing system that will improve the chemical, physical, and biological conditions of our fairways. We will begin posting the hole that we are aerating to the website daily, to avoid any confusion. This fall we purchased a new ride on bunker rake. The rake will help us increase the consistency of bunkers while reducing labor hours spent hand raking bunkers. It represents an industry wide push for new technologies and techniques to help increase automation and decrease labor inputs. Fall is a very busy time of year on the golf course. The cool nights and low humidity bring some of the best conditions of the season. The grounds crew will be busy over the next few months preparing things for next season. Fescue areas are being cut down and sprayed, most of the playing surfaces will be aerated and fertilized before winter ( greens will not be touched until late november ), bunkers will be edged back, sod repairs will be made to traffic areas and the irrigation system will be reviewed and repaired for next year. We hope you enjoy these final months of the golf season, and please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. Fall is just around the corner, and the cooler nights and shorter days have quickened the recovery from the aeration two weeks ago. The results have been as expected and the staff is already moving forward with preparations for the upcoming Invitational.
In the coming weeks, the playing surfaces will be conditioned with extra mowing, rolling, grooming and adjusted chemical inputs. We will also be spending extra time trimming around the course, adjusting the distribution of sand in the bunkers, and freshly filling all the divots. I am learning that divots and the cart bottles have been a hot button issue here at Rivercrest for many years. Having spent the season evaluating our current divot program, it seems as though our landing areas are often bowl shaped, a design which exacerbates the divots. The landing areas coupled with long hot summer days that slow grass growth have visually impacted the appearance of the divots on the course. The good news it that with the upcoming cooler nights, the grass will begin to grow more quickly and the divots will recover faster.
After a half season of observation, I do not believe going back to divot bottles on the cart will lead to better results. The plan is to begin using a new divot mix with higher fertility, which will quicken the recovery of the divots. We appreciate the patience as we continue to fill divots daily. During this week’s aerification closure, we thoroughly covered the divots on the fairways in anticipation of cooler nights and better growth. As always, I am always happy to talk grass with any member. It is always a great way to get to know the membership a little better. Email me with any questions you might have! Or, if there is a blog topic you would like discussed, let me know and we will make it happen! tge@rivercrestgolfclub.com Yesterday afternoon we got some much needed rain (1.5 inches) in the form of several severe thunderstorms. While the rain helped the overall health of the golf course, and will expedite the recovery from this week’s aerification: it left the grounds crew with a lot of work to do putting the course back together. The sand in the bunkers washed out, leaves and sticks were strewn about the playing field, and several large branches were down that required chainsaws and loaders to clean up. Thankfully the staff has been working hard since before sun up and many of these issues will be resolved before the golfers get to them. Unfortunately, carts will be on paths only for the remainder of the day.
After being closed for a few days, it great to see the golfers back out there. This weekend’s forecast looks amazing for golf and for quick recovery of the greens. Thank you all for the support: please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. Aeration week is in full swing, and despite the heat things are going great! We are wrapping up the greens and approach aeration process with a coating of topdressing sand. Tomorrow afternoon we will double roll the greens and start to prepare them to be open Thursday morning. Unfortunately, we will not be able to finish solid tining the fairways. We started the first fairway, but the environmental conditions are not in our favor. It is simply too dry and too hot to successfully aerate. With some good weather will be aerating the fairways this fall as the golf calendar allows. Next week, the golf course will be closed for aerification from Monday through Wednesday. Our goal is to reopen Thursday if all goes according to plan.
During this week, the grounds crew will be busy aerating most of the playing surfaces. The greens, approaches and remaining tees will be core aerated and topdressed. The fairways will be solid tine aerated. This necessary agronomic process will provide air to the roots, remove unwanted organic matter, relieve compaction from our soils and set up the health of the playing surfaces for a fantastic fall of golf. The goal is to have a very playable golf course by the weekend and an amazing golf course in less than 2 weeks. Thank you in advance for you understanding, while we complete this process. Please feel free to contact me directly with any questions or concerns. Chris Toporski is the newest member of the agronomic team here at Rivercrest. I had the good fortune to work with Chris at Saucon Valley, as well as Huntingdon Valley as he began his career. From there he moved onto gaining experience at clubs such as: May River in South Carolina, Phoenixville Country Club just down the road, and Sunnybrook Golf Club in Plymouth Meeting. Chris brings a friendly, high energy, detail oriented attitude to the team here at Rivercrest. When not at work you can find Chris in town with his wife Sarah, son Eric, and two dachshunds Hines and Rocco. He enjoys running and competing in half marathons, cheering for the Steelers, and cooking in his time away from work.
It is hard to believe that summer is more than halfway over. This summer’s weather has been much nicer than last year's monsoon. We have had a nice balance of typical Philly summer weather, heat waves, thunder storms, and hot nights. The golf course is extremely healthy as we head into the home stretch of summer. Across the region, the golf course turf industry is seeing a bumper crop of weeds this year as a bi-product of last year's rain. Our agronomy team has been hard at work eliminating the pesky out of place plants using a variety of cultural and chemical controls. We have mowed down many of the fescue areas that were inundated with weeds. This is a great ecological way to reduce the population of herbaceous, woody weeds. We will be continuing to mow down many of the fescue areas as part of a multi-step program to improve these areas. Many areas of rough and fescue have been treated with selective herbicides to remove the weeds that subsist after mowing. This fall any thin areas will be over-seeded and fertilized for next season. Our goal in the fescue areas is to create a stand of primary fine fescue that is uniform, playable, and penal without being an automatic lost ball. In August we will be aerating the greens, tees, and approaches. Thank you in advance for your understanding with the short-term compromised playing conditions. These few days of bumpy greens will set up an amazing fall of golf.
2.25 inches of rain fell last night washing out all of our bunkers. We woke up to lot of work to prepare for this weekend's Championships! The daunting task of putting our bunkers back together after a major storm like last night takes nearly an additional 40 man hours. Thankfully, with our amazing staff, the work is always done properly and efficiently! I am pleased to report that because of the excellent condition of our USGA spec greeens we were able to mow and roll the greens this morning and they are roll a smooth 11ft 4in on the stimp meter. Best of luck to everyone in the championships this weekend!
One of the new tools that we have to manage the moisture and chemical conditions of the golf course is our POGO. The POGO is a moisture, salinity, and temperature meter that maps conditions using GPS and creates real time shareable data to help our agronomy team manage the golf course. Using this tool we are able to fine tune our watering, fertilizing, and chemical practices to optimize the playing surfaces.
Summer is truly here! We are currently in the middle of our first heat wave, and the golf course is responding well to the conditions. The aeration and fertility practice of the spring have set up our turfgrass to weather the upcoming stress of summer. During the heat we will be implementing practices to reduce water usage and unnecessary stressors on the playing surfaces. For example the greens will be mowing less frequently, but rotating rolling to maintain proper speed and smoothness. This reduction in the mechanical mowing stress will reduce the inputs needed to manage the greens while keeping them healthy during the extreme heat.
The heat of the summer is also a huge safety concern for you and our staff. I would like to take a moment to remind everyone that during the heat you need to hydrate to dominate. Please remember to take care of yourself and enjoy this amazing summer on the golf course. Yesterday was a great day on the golf course for the staff to get caught up on lots of small projects and processes. We applied preventive fungicides to the fairways. We aerated several low spots on the greens to help them prepare for the upcoming heat. We cut down some aggressive reed by the 4th red tee box, that were blocking views. We fixed several broke irrigation sprinklers. We redistributed the sand at the chipping area. And finally, we mowed all the grass that we could not get to last week during the heavy rain.
This week, we are aerating the tees with a small coring tine. This process began on hole 10-18 on Monday and will be completed by Wednesday morning. This aeration, similar to the greens aeration, will help provide healthy turf for the upcoming summer heat. Our clean up process is very efficient as you can see in the picture below, we are cleaning on the same hole we are aerating.
The past two weeks have brought us some of the best conditions of the season so far. Unfortunately, there is significant rainfall in the projected forecast. The greens core aeration is being modified to a solid tine and a verticut because of inclement weather. This shift in agronomic strategies should net a similar plant health response for the upcoming dog days of summer. Working around the heavy rains may delay our completion of these processes, but I am confident that the greens will be rolling true by the weekend.
On the course, the dry weather has allowed us to get caught up on most of our mowing and the rough finally seems under control. With the irrigation pond lowered, we plan on using this week to fix some of the rock walls that have fallen in, specifically 14 and 17. At the clubhouse, improving first impressions for our members and guests will continue with the addition of more perennial flowers, plus some haircuts for the bushes and shrubs before the summer heat sets in. Today, we aerated a section of the fifth green. This was done to alleviate the black layer that was developing in the low spot. Black layer is an anaerobic soil condition cause by excessive moisture. All of the spring rain allowed this condition to begin. The aeration performed today allowed gas exchange and will quickly improve the area. Unfortunately, this section of 5 is prone to collecting water, so please bear with us as this will be a common occurrence if the wet weather continues.
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Tim Edwards tge@rivercrestgolfclub.com Archives
January 2023
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