May Update

Well I had planned to do a post every two weeks and I see it will be a month tommorow since my last blog post, so I guess I will start now.

Colin verticutting tees

A typical hole

The last three weeks have been pretty busy for the Dinosaur Trail Turf Care Team. We have been fairly successful in completing our cultural practices, as greens are on schedule for their bi-weekly verticut and topdress. Our first verticut proved to be very time consuming as this practice has not been used on the golf course, maybe ever. Tees and collars have also been verticut and are showing improvement everyday. Our fertility program is ramping up as we plan to fertilize tees, fairways, and rough this week. Our greens will also get there first dose of Propel from Floratine and continue with our foliar program.

Our main focus as a crew these past few weeks have been to assist Dan Funk from Aqua Lawn out of B.C in troubleshooting our irrigation wiring on the back nine of the golf course. I was aware we had problems, but not to the extent that we uncovered. Using the combination of his specialized tools and 35 years experience, Dan had our crew digging holes all over the place to expose wiring. I kept a tally and we were up to 30 holes dug over a five hole span. Many of them three to four feet deep down to the mainline.

I must send a big shout out to my small but ambitious crew, without them we would have never made as quick of progress as we did dealing with issues, and they were able to put the golf course back together, only two days after Dan had left. As well thanks to our Assistant Superintendent Andrew Smith for putting in some big days and helping Dan out while I had to go back to Manitoba for prior commitments, it makes my life much easier.
When we started we had over 150 heads than were no longer controlled automatically on the back nine, when we finished we were down to 6. I learned a tonne over the six days I had the chance to work with Dan, and seeing how he systematically approaches each problem will be something I will always remember.

Most of our issues were caused by three things: 

A splice on the common wire that literally fell apart when we exposed it

1. The quality of work and products used during initial installation
2. Damaged wires and incorrect splices from past irrigation repairs
3. A misunderstanding of irrigation wiring when trying to band-aid fix a wire problem

It was very impressive to see Dan work, as within our first hour we had located a cut in the common wire that had taken down the stations for the 13th green. I remember him saying ``dig here the break in the wire is three feet down``. I did what he said and he was bang on, he pretty much found the proverbial needle in a haystack.

A cut in the wire that send the common to ground

We found many issues that made Dan shake his head, and I believe that their probably isn`t anyone else out there than can troubleshoot irrigation wiring as efficiently as he can.

In the next few weeks we plan to map our irrigation system and continue focus on improving the golf course. We will be doing some drainage and sub-base work in preparation for renovating cart paths on some badly damaged areas. I also anticipate our new PLC for the pumphouse will arrive in the next two weeks so that we can regain the automatic control for our VFD`s. Currently I can only run the pumps in manual control which means I will literally be sleeping in the pumphouse the next few nights with these hot temperatures on the way. Once we get this irrigation system full automated, as it was intended to be, we will focus on cleaning up tee and green areas on the back nine and resodding weak areas on greens.

15 fairway

In the near future I plan to overseed our back nine fairways as they are decimated and taken over by dandelions. I plan to use a drought tolerant blend of bluegrasses and fescues to ensure that the turf can deal with the conditions present in the Canadian Badlands.

Overall I think we are making progress in reaching our goals, but it is a slow progress. The gains that we have made are a reflection of our crew and the true passion they have for the property. It is exciting for me to see that they are noticing the small changes in the course and feeling proud of their accomplishments.