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.