Excellent Video

This link - Golf Course Ecology in England -  will take you to an excellent video on the conservation work of greenkeepers in England.

Alwoody Golf Club, Leeds, Yorkshire

At Bittersweet we are undertaking many of the same goals and methods that are shown in the video.

Enjoy!

What do you do in the winter?

One of my favorite winter jobs is forestry work.

Between the 11^th and 12^th hole of Bittersweet we have a native forest area that has been overrun by non-native species, namely buckthorn and honeysuckle. A close-up shot of these plants shows that they form a dense growth that out-competes native plants for nutrients, light and moisture. 

By removing these plants.…..

…..we are restoring wildlife habitat.....

…..and as an added benefit we are making the golf course much easier to play - a ball that was formerly hit in this area was lost, but now you will have a good chance of finding the ball and keeping it in play.

In the spring we hope to see a proliferation of wildflowers and a return of native ground cover here.

In the edges and swales where water moves through this forest we will plant fescue grass to control erosion. Soil conservation is another reason why the control of non-native trees and shrubs is good ecology – as we eliminate these invasive plants we allow more sunlight to reach the floor of the forest and the environment can now sustain soil conserving plant life. The invasive plants such as Buckthorn do not conserve soil as well as native plants. 

The Black Cherry trees are going to be left in this woodland, even though many are not particularly attractive trees, for as you can see below Black Cherry trees provide great habitat for several species of birds that are trunk-nesters.

Scalping Time

Several weeks ago we converted various areas of rough and embankment to intermediate cut. This involved lowering the height of cut from 2.5" to 1".

From 2.5" to 1"

This week we are lowering these same areas from 1" to 1/2". The final step to 1/2" is the most radical change for the turf to sustain.

From 1" to 1/2"

Cool ground game option on greenside hollow

Over the years I have found that late fall is the best time of year to scalp rough and intermediate turf to fairway height. In the spring time the scalped turf will regenerate itself at the new height of cut. At this time we will aerate and seed with bentgrass. The bentgrass will gradually fill in these areas.

Expanding the approach and collar to the narrow 10th green

Fairway Aeration

This week we have been aerifying fairways with the Toro Pro-Core.

Our Toro distributer is letting us demo the machine.



The aerifyer plugs are being collected with a Toro Sweeper.

 

The sweeper leaves a very clean playing surface.

The plugs are dumped in the rough.

Next week the plugs will moved to the back of our driving range

 and spread out to form a level turf nursery.

With these two machines we are able to aerify fairways quickly and with no inconvenience to golfers - the 4th hole was completed by two men in only 3.5 hours.

Skyline Green Project

Keith has been working on a fun project today.

There was an extraordinary view of our native wetlands habitat behind the 16^th green. But the view was blocked by willow and cottonwood saplings that would have eventually smothered the green.

Today Keith and Peter worked on clearing the area. In addition to opening up a wonderful view, we will now be able to mow this area to reduce lost balls and unplayable lies.

The 16^th green is now open in the back, revealing a broad expanse of wetlands and skyline. Triple click the photo to get a full size view of how beautiful this view is now.

The link below will take you to an article I wrote several years ago on the strategic merits of the skyline green.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16492815/Back%20Drops.pdf

Roel Grills lunch.

Yesterday, on what may have been the last really nice warm day of the season, Roel grilled us up some steak and chicken fajaitas on oak and hickory wood embers.

What a great treat for the crew to enjoy together near the end of the season.



4th Hole Improvements

Today Miquel and Roel completed clearing of white willow trees along the edges of the 4th hole.



Before

After - Now a much more interesting and attractive hole to play.



There is a nice stand of fescue grass beneath the areas we have been clearing around the ponds. We will be able to mow these areas to control noxious weeds such as thistle.

Miquel and Roel are now clearing the growth of thistle with knives and pruners 

Meanwhile Peter continues to find more drain lines. This one on number 16 is fairly close to the low areas where water puddles after a heavy rain. Every dollar that we spend on drainage generates revenue in letting carts go sooner after a rain.

Miquel



Noe repairing a leak on 2 fairway





Fairway Drainage

Peter has been locating drain lines using a wire tracker. Here he has found a surface riser in the rough. He will be sending an electricians "fish tape" down the drain line and wire tracking it to see if it is conveniently located beneath any areas where standing water may be a problem.



100 foot of fish tape is down the pipe and connected to a transponder

Below Peter is painting the drain line and fortunately it goes right near an area where we had standing water on the fairway in July, when the daily temperatures were in the high 90's after heavy rain fall.

Now Peter is beginning to install surface risers in the wet areas. Rainy days like we are currently having are ideal for doing the work, because you can see that the drain is actually working while you are installing it.



Peter has found the drain line - right over the line he painted two weeks ago

Peter has installed a surface riser and he is now back filling the hole with Pea Gravel.



A torpedo level is placed on the grate during back fill



Another riser



The sod is placed back and the soil from the hole is hauled away

Fairway Expansion

In many places the fairways and approaches at Bittersweet were designed to play much too narrow and difficult for the average player. 

Looking backwards down the 10th hole

Miquel and Bernardo, two of the better players on our staff, have helped me to lay out the various areas where our fairways should be expanded to make the golf course play easier. Our mechanic, Kieth, is going out three days a week to mow theses areas down in gradual increments with our intermediate cut mower.

Kieth



We have also widened the cut on many of our approaches.

The area to left of the approach has been lowered from 2.5" to 1"



The same area from the fairway - double the width of the original approach

The golfers that have played Bittersweet from the day it opened report that they have enjoyed the golf course much more now that we have opened up some of these narrow fairways.

11 fairway expansion

15 fairway expansion right side

New Bunker Sand

The last two weeks we have been adding fresh sand to our bunkers. This will allow our players to have more control over their recovery shots.

Every year we will need to add a few inches of sand over the top of the old sand to replace that which is lost from rain washouts, wind and degradation.

The sand is dumped directly in to the bunker and spread by hand.



For the next two weeks we will power rake the bunkers every day to help the new sand mix with the underlying sand. This will make the sand play firmer.

We are very fortunate here at Bittersweet that the bunkers were grassed with fescue when the golf course was originally built. Fescue does not creep or grow laterally in to the sand as does Kentucky Bluegrass, the conventional species of bunker grass. Kentucky Bluegrass bunkers must be mechanically edged several times during the golf season. But our fescue bunker edges can go up to two years between edging without loosing their shape. And the edges of the fescue bunkers are more whispy and natural in appearance.

The oldest bunkers in America were originally fuzzy and irregular like ours are now. But with subsequent remodeling of bunkers those original fescue grasses were sodded over by Kentucky Bluegrass - it was not very easy to find fescue sod in those days - sod farms were not growing it. So the American bunker evolved into something that is actually very expensive to edge and maintain. And the appearance of the American bunker became unnatural - the edges took on a crisp and curvilinear pattern to conform with the mechanical edging tools that were used to maintain the Kentucky Bluegrass edges.

We are very fortunate here at Bittersweet that our bunker motif is economically and environmentally sustainable.