Feast or Famine

Tunnel 5 feet full of water

The last two weeks have been interesting for the Dinosaur Trail turf care team. In my last post I was talking about drought conditions, now I find myself dealing with an abundance of moisture. In the past week we received over 10 inches of precipitation. The majority of it falling on the 13^th of June triggering a flash flood. One 24 inch culvert is expected to handle run off draining to the river for an area larger than a section of land. Normally it can accommodate  daily run off, but during this event it was undersized. Our 8 x 10 foot transportation tunnel that runs under the highway doubled as a culvert, allowing the water to flow freely across the front nine to the river. I believe without the tunnel we would have been dealing with some major flood clean up and highway erosion. The course handled the water relatively well with it only needing it to be closed for two days. As of this morning, most of the standing water in bunkers and on fairways has dissipated, so playing conditions continue to improve.

River running across the course up to 20 ft deep in some spots

Hard to see, but water on the front of 16 green

Dan working on drainage

With the recent moisture and warm temperatures the turf has started to grow like crazy, hopefully this week we can get caught up on rough and fairways since we have been unable to mow for the last 3 days. The greens are starting to fill in nicely and this week we are going to start applying Primo Maxx to our greens. Growth regulators have never been used on Dinosaur Trail so I am excited to see the results in the next few weeks.

This week we plan to finish and clean up areas that Dan Funk has been working on the past few weeks. This includes the septic field on the first hole and putting the final touches on the 14^th cart path before the recycled tire product is laid. We also have some cleanup to do from the flooding as a large amount of bentonite has washed onto the 18^th fairway and we must remove it before it kills the turf. The rain gave me the chance to see how the water moves through the back nine and determine where drainage is needed to prevent erosion. Before we continue to improve the cart paths on the back nine we will need to address the drainage.

Working on 14 cartpath

fresh water shrimp plugging heads

This past week we also installed wye strainers on our irrigation system to prevent sprinkler heads from being plugged or damaged by foreign bodies entering the irrigation system. We have had some major issues with fresh water shrimp plugging our heads , these wye strainers will eliminate this and save valuable man hours spent flushing heads. As well we will receive our new PLC this week for our pump station which is long overdue. This will speed up the process of troubleshooting the irrigation system, as we still have around 50 heads to replace and many more to adjust. I am hoping by mid July the irrigation system will be close to 100% operational. We have made great strides on the irrigation system as we maybe had 30% of the irrigation system operating properly at the start of the season.

In the upcoming weeks our team plans to really focus on our greens and repairing all winter damage with plugging or sodding. The tees were aerated, over seeded, and topdressed last week so hopefully we will see some improvement on the front nine tees from this.

Overall I believe we continue to make progress and this is all due to the dedicated crew we have. I wish we were further along in meeting the goals I have set, but I need to be realistic as we spend a lot of time dealing with inefficiencies and putting out fires. I look forward to the time when all areas of turf care are running efficiently and we can really start improve the golf course.

As I look back at the last 4 months as my time as a Superintendent, I would have never thought the learning  curve would have been so extreme. In applying for this position I figured I was prepared to make the jump from an assistant. I never figured I would be pushed to my limits the way I have been. If I would have known what challenges I would have needed to overcome at Dinosaur Trail, I honestly don’t know if I would have accepted the position. Now that I am into the thick of it and things are turning around I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. I have never learned so much or used the word “unbelievable” in my vocabulary in such a short period of time over the past ten years in the turfgrass industry. I look forward to having my personal life move off the back burner and be able to enjoy more of the summer.

Making the Turn

The month of May has been an interesting one for the Dinosaur Trail Turf Care Team. In the last 20 days we have received less than 10 mm of rain, so that has put a lot of stress on our outdated and damaged irrigation system. The Programmable Logical Controller or PLC for short that controls the variable speed motors on our turbine pumps, no longer operates, so all watering must be done with the pumps running in the manual setting. This overrides any high pressure and low pressure shutdown safeties and means that someone must be always keeping an eye on the pressure while watering. This has lead to some long nights on the golf course and a lot of coffee consumed. There is a light at the end of the tunnel as our PLC will be updated within the next few weeks, and I look forward to sleeping in my bed and not at my desk. To date we have replaced upwards of 25 damaged sprinkler heads, and have at least another 30 to go, not to mention the leveling of another 40 heads.

 I have inherited greens with some pretty severe hydrophobic conditions, so we have been applying wetting agent and doing a lot of hand watering, which in the last few days have started to show some improvement, but I am still not happy with where they are at. The growing conditions as of late have been great, but we really have not been able to take advantage of them, as we are just trying to keep our heads above water and not let the course regress.

This past week started off on a positive note as we installed new irrigation for our range tee and practice green. This area has been without water since the start of the year due to major spiral fractures caused by improper blowout. We abandoned the current piping and now have a solid system in place that can be expanded if we decide to improve our range fairway.

On Tuesday we attempted to repair a small leak in our sewer line down to our septic field which is located on the left hand side of the 1^st hole. One thing lead to another and we found the field had a major blockage in it and that many of the lateral lines were at least 50% contaminated with solids. I do not consider myself very knowledgeable on septic fields but I quickly had to learn. With the help of Dan Funk we repaired the blockage and replaced 10 of the lateral lines in the septic field, now the system is operating as it was intended to.

Old lateral that is contaminated 50% and has no drainage rock

 

 

New laterals being installed properly

septic field area ready for topsoil and seed

This week we start in on drainage and cart path repair work. Dan will be installing catch basins to deal with water that erodes our cart paths by the tunnel to the back nine and the 14^th hole. The cart path on the 14^th hole is as sketchy as they come. It is a huge safety issue that has needed attention and we have chosen to try recycled tire crumb over a product called ecogrid. It will be an interesting trial to see how well this product holds up on a severely sloped cart path. We were successful in securing a grant from Alberta Recycling to cover most of the cost of the project, so if this product works well we will continue to replaces the back nine cart paths with it.

Looking up 14th cart path

I am hoping in my next blog post I will be able to discuss how we have started to improve playing conditions, but until we get our infrastructure operating efficiently, we will continue to put out fires and tread water.

If it wasn’t for our great turf care crew at Dino Trail, we would have not progressed as much as we have. I am fortunate to have people on the crew that genuinely want to make the course better and take pride in their tasks. I feel things are only going to get easier from this point on, coupled with a great team, I think we are going to make some great strides in the next few months.