Pond Issues

All bodies of water are different, different sizes, shapes, depths and many other factors that make no two ponds alike.  This means that they are all different ecosystems.

We have 7 different water retainage areas on the course. I will go over each of them in this post and describe the issues that we have, some historical information and the efforts that we have put forth.

#7

First off #7 has a very special place in my heart, My beautiful wife and I were married on the edge of that pond.  It is one of the 2 fondest memories that I have, the other being the birth of my son.  This hole is also the "signature" hole for the golf course.  It is a retainage pond.  It has had issues in the past with algae, not bad issues but issues none the less.  This year there was a die off of fish in that pond.  The cause of the fish die off was a lack of dissolved oxygen in the water column.  There were several factors that led to the oxygen burn.  The main factors were water temperature, having a fountain missing, and a hot stretch of summer followed by a cold rainfall.  The process of a fish kill is a rough process.  When any organism in a water body dies the decomposition process burns oxygen in the water, so a body of water that is low in oxygen gets lower.  It's like rolling a boulder down a hill the further it goes the harder it is to stop.  However, we had employees out there cleaning up dead fish with pool skimmers trying to keep the amount of decomposition and odor to a minimum.  I think we did a great job responding to the issue in a timely fashion.
A brief history on this pond.  It has gone dry 2 times since the construction that I know of.  Once was about 5 years ago and once was well before my time. 
The homeowners that live around the ponds have been managing  and maintaining the fountains in the ponds for the last 10+ years.  We met with that "Pond HOA" and they have given us the control of the fountains.  They did a great job with those fountains for a long time.  We have already changed out the nozzles on the units to throw more water and create more oxygen and surface cooling.  we have gone from 400 Gallons Per Minute to 1500 GPM, a large difference.  I am currently investigating different fish species to introduce to this area.  predatory fish like bass to keep the number of smaller fish down, triploid grass carp to help keep the ponds clean and we have used tilapia in the past to help combat algae.  I am also researching colorants for this area to block UV rays and prohibit algae populations.

#9

This pond has no issues.  It used to be a hazard on the course that had dried up because of the inability to fill it.  Since gaining that ability the pond has sealed up and is holding water nicely and is again a hazard.

#11

This pond is the start of a storm water runoff system.  The water that runs into it comes from HWY 231 and surrounding areas.  It used to be one of the sources of our irrigation water.  It has issues with primrose, an aquatic plant that is easily controlled with 2,4-D or Diquat.  Both of these herbicides are acceptable to apply in water bodies and safe to fish.  Since it is a storm water system the water column is changed over frequently with large rainfall events.  I have simply not had the time to treat this pond lately and that's on me.  This pond is also about 4 feet deep and has about 3 feet of sediment in the bottom.

#12

This pond is on the far right as you drive in the neighborhood.  It is the same scenario as #11 an storm water collection system that used to be part of our irrigation source.  the pond on #11 feeds to #12 and It also gets fed by all surface runoff from areas south of this from Runnymeade Drive north.  So this pond gets double the input that #11 gets.  It is about 4 feet deep with a rock bottom.  UV rays penetrate it easily to allow algae and other plants to grow in it easily.  In the past there were major algae issues with this area.  The neighbors banded together that lived around this area about 9 years ago.  They purchased and installed 3 fountains with IHGC's blessing, 2 in #12 and 1 in #13.  These were small 110 volt fountains that did not exchange much water and could not cool off the water column because there is no cool water to draw from in the summer on a 4 ft deep pond.  After a while these fountains were just sucking up the muck on the bottom of the ponds and getting clogged up with debris.  They became more of a maintenance nightmare than they were worth.  It was a good effort but a poor fit for the process.
That being said we do not have an algae issue in this pond this year so much as we have a duckweed infestation.  Duckweed is a naturally occurring plant that is one of the smallest complete plants on earth.  It is about the size of a pencil tip.  If you are interested in researching the plant click on the highlighted name above and it will take you to Wikipedia.  The problem with duckweed is that it is very hard to kill in our environment  the plant already has a seed by the time it hits the surface and releases that seed when killed so surface herbicides, diquat, do not work well.  There is a product that I tried at the correct application rates, "Sonar".  This herbicide has the ability to treat the entire water column, kill plants and seeds.  Its issue is that it needs to be active in a body of water for 48 days and it is very expensive.  I estimate that our application was active for about 7 days before the rains flushed that chemical out of the water body.  It is really hard for me to justify spending someone else's hard earned money on a issue that is almost guaranteed no win scenario.  Do not misread that statement, that does not mean that I am not going to do anything about it, it means that I am going to be very careful about what I do.  I had attempted 3 diquat applications this summer and 1 sonar application.  You also have to remember the statement from #7 pond about organisms decomposing in relation to oxygen content.  So if we kill of all of the vegetative material in a 4 foot deep pond at once it will burn off oxygen and "shock" the pond thus potentially killing fish.  I have to follow the rule of thirds when treating the ponds as not to create a different problem.  the rule of thirds is to never treat a heavily invested pond by more than 1/3 of the surface area at one time as to protect the other ecology in that environment from damage.

#13

This is the closest pond to the road on the right as you drive in.  It is also part of the storm water runoff system and has the same issues as #12.  The duckweed moves with water and gravity, down stream.  This pond would have small algae blooms in the Spring each season as the temps came up.  But, it had one natural defense, it is a very deep pond with flow through.  The depth allowed the water to remain cooler and reduced the ability of UV rays to penetrate to the bottom and breed algae.

#18

This pond is on the left side of the entrance as you drive in the neighborhood.  It is our irrigation holding pond.  It contains IHGC's water once it is in this pond it is IHGC's and no one else's.  the brick house on 231 side is our pumping station.  It is state of the art and we are very proud of it.  The water in the pond is effluent water the same kind of water that many golf courses around the town and the world are trying to use.  We do this in order to reduce our environmental footprint.  We are not the first golf course to use effluent water and we will not be the last.  Effluent water can be from many different sources but ours is processed treated water.  It is not sewer nor has it ever been water that went down a toilet.  One quality and burden of Effluent water is that it contains nutrients Phosphorus particularly which is a key food source for algae.  Also the effluent is warmer and creates another algae breeding scenario.  You will notice that it can get kind of a pea soup look in the summer, this is green algae trying to bloom in the water column.  About 7 years ago in the infancy of our Effluent usage we had a complete coverage of algae on that pond.  After that we installed 2 Sonic Devices that emit ultrasonic sonar wavelengths that actually destroy the algae at a cellular level as it is trying to form.  These devices have done a great job in control of algae blooms.  Remember this is our irrigation source and we apply this water to the grass on the golf course so there is the concern of herbicide transference and damage to the course by herbicide applications in this pond.  I do not believe that we require any herbicide applications to this pond at this time.

#17

This pond is having trouble holding water at a certain depth  It is a small hazard pond on the course.  we may try to add some bentonite to the banks in the future to seal up any leaks.

This season we have had several complaints made to regulatory authorities with concerns about our water areas by neighbors of the course.  I have been working with TDEC since the complaints started on #18, 13 and 7.  They are well aware of the issues that we face.  I have explained with them what our management attempts are and have been.  They have agreed with my strategies.

There are other methods of algae control such as sub surface bubbler systems that release air at the bottom of the pond and help create aeration and circulation of the water.

I am happy to accept phone calls on the issues or any golf course related issue.  I can also be found on social media @bradmarcy on Twitter.

The Color of the Greens

You may have noticed some "mood swings" in the color of the greens this winter.  They have lost a lot of their color and all of a sudden they will be back to the nice green color that we all like to see.

During these colder weather patterns and low daylight periods the bentgrass can actually get close to a dormancy period if nothing is done to keep it active.  Over the last few weeks we have had horrible weather for our area.  It has been exceptionally cold and wet.  If it is wet than that means that there was probably overcast conditions.  Which means that the greens can't get the proper amount of sunlight that they need on days with limited windows of sunlight.  when these conditions occur we will start to lose color. 

We get the bounce back by applying a fertilizer combination.  Typically I will apply a nitrogen based fertilizer with iron.  The nitrogen gets the plant up and moving a bit.  The iron is responsible for giving the nice green color back to the plant. 

So, if you notice the greens starting to dull in appearance, just wait a bit I'm sure they will be green again before you know it.

What do you do in the winter?

My kid's pediatrician asked me the other day, "What do you do in the winter at the golf course?"  Kind of caught me off guard with the question, just because I wasn't expecting to talk turf while taking my kid to the doctor.  The answer slid out after a moment of brief hesitation.  But then I started thinking how much I get asked this question come Fall, in different forms.  "Y'all staying busy out there?", "Too cold to be working today right?"' "What are y'all doing today?", "There can't be much to do over there in the Winter?" and many other forms of the same question.
Well, it's the week of Thanksgiving and I'm currently on vacation with my family at the beach and I still can't stop working.  I am taking a break from creating my budget for 2015 right now.  That is one of my big tasks for the month of November.  This also involves the process of early ordering chemicals for 2015, which means that I have to have an agronomic plan in place for 2015 by this point.  I'm not going to go too deep into what I, personally, have to get done. 
I will come up with ideas of things that I would like to change all year long.  Hopefully when I have that idea I have my trusty voice recorder with me so I can make a "note to self" and remind myself later.  Some of the things that we work on are carry over jobs that are just too big for our staff to complete in one season.  We also have repeat jobs that we have to do the same at a certain time every winter. 
I will try to outline the jobs that we will be doing this season excluding keeping up the golf course, which does not stop getting done,

Single Season Jobs
tree work
debris removal
opening up the traffic areas on #6
building new tees on #11 and #17
converting the monument Tee signs into flush in ground tee signs
fixing the maintenance shop ceiling
cut back the bradford pears in the parking lots
relocate and identify the correct teeing areas from the score card
adding new heat to pump station

Carry over jobs
clearing out the riverbank on #8, 16, 17, 18
rebuilding bunkers
repair poor sections of cart path

Repeat jobs
spray roundup and pre emergent on entire course 
repaint all tee markers on course
repaint all hazard markers on course
repaint all OB stakes on course
leaf removal in late fall/early winter
re seal wood products out on course benches, cooler stands, trash cans
reorganize the maintenance yard area
clean out and re insulate bird houses huts and nesting areas
working on repairing faulty wiring in the irrigation system
repainting the pump station

I know that I am missing a few in there but even with the amount of repeat jobs we have a lot to accomplish in an off season with a limited staff, not to mention working on the interior of the club house when it needs attention.  And I know that I will come up with more stuff that I want to complete because I do suffer from my eyes being bigger than my stomach frequently.
With all of that said, that's what we will be doing this winter.

Another Aerification Article

Yep, We aerified the greens again.  I was trying to think of a different way to communicate this topic because I'm sure that I've beaten it like a drum in past posts. 
My staff and I have aerified, cleaned off cores, picked up cores, sanded, fertilized twice, brushed, and watered all day long.  This was my 13th time aerifying the greens here at IHGC.  The 27th time for my career.  Over that time period it gets pretty difficult to change your methods.  However, I did change some of the chemical and fertilizer methods that I used to hold true to.  I won't bore you with the details, but the generalities are, something to make the greens more firm and more fertilizers of different varieties. 
Normally on Aerification day we are still plugging away (literally) at the greens until 5:30 or 6:00 PM and wouldn't finish topdressing and dragging until noon on day 2.  But, my staff was clocking out at 4 PM because everything had gone so smoothly.  Still not exactly sure where the reduction in time came from but I like it. 
I will be posting a video of the process on my youtube channel before too long so that you can better see the whole process in action. 
We punched 4.6 million holes in the greens.  That's just shy of 250,000 holes per green on average.

Roundup Application

Some of you may have noticed the blue/green dye around the greens and in the club grounds.  This is a dye indicator that shows where our chemical application was made with the spray hawk bordering the greens.  We used the dye this year to try to make us more efficient this winter.  When we spray with the standard spray rigs we use foam marker to show where we have gone.  20 min later the foam is gone and no one knows that we were ever there.  The Spray Hawk device does not have a foam marker there fore we cannot see where we sprayed chemical very well.  We added the dye this year to reduce overlapping of chemical and missed areas in between passes.  I think that it really made the operation much more smooth.  The operators doing the spraying loved it.  I am still not loving the color left behind but I am a fan of the process being more efficient.

Coincidentally,  If you do have a yard that is Bermudagrass or are looking to start the process of cleaning up the weeds in your yard now is the time to make that roundup application.  You have through February to finish this task. 

What's happening with our ponds?

I have been getting the same question about our ponds all summer, so I figured I'd answer it in a public forum for anyone else who might be interested but may not see me to ask the question. 
What is going on with the ponds at the entrance?
Of the three ponds visible from the entrance drive, #'s 12, 13 and 18, one of them looks good.  Two of them look bad.  #12 has blown up with Algae like it had in 2011 and previous years.  #13 looks fine.  #18 is about 3.5' low right now. 
Starting with #12.  I refer to this as a pond, but it is more accurately described as a water retention area.  It was not designed to hold fish, feed livestock, or go swimming or canoeing in.  It was designed to make you afraid of hitting a golf ball into it.  The guys who built the pond while well intentioned were probably not aquatic experts and did not see the nightmare that they were creating.  This pond is 4 ' deep with a rock bottom (it cannot be dug any deeper).  When you have a pond that shallow light penetrates to the floor of the pond and creates an environment where algae can grow.  This is the same problem that this pond has had for a long time.  We found a solution last season with the Tilapia.  Unfortunately, I thought that a wait and see approach would be better on the pond this season to see how bad the problem came back.  It came back with a vengeance.  I was too late getting the Tilapia out and now we are resulting to chemical control methods.  If you are using chemical control methods why don't you spray it all out?  Great question!  Because when we kill aquatic weeds they sink and decompose under the surface of the water.  When Algae decomposes it uses oxygen.  Guess who else uses oxygen in the water....Fish.  There is not a lot of oxygen to be had in a 4' deep pond if we expend all of the oxygen on a plant burn off we will be left with floating stinking fish, and maybe if we're lucky get our picture on the front page of the newspaper.  So, we are progressively spraying out the algae around the banks about 1/8 of the surface area at a time.
#13 Pond.  It looks great!  This pond is 13 feet deep and has good deep banks the water is clear you can see strait to the bottom on a sunny day from on top of the rock wall.  I am not recommending that you go out on the rock wall, we frown upon that. 
#18 Pond.  This pond has been up and down all year.  right now it is down 3.5'.  The reason that it is so low is that our water line has been interrupted temporarily.  As you probably know we receive effluent water from General Mills across the river and have been for the last 4 years.  This year General Mills had a construction project that sat right on top of the pipeline that feeds #18 pond on their side of the river.  The pipeline was not built with the idea of supporting a structure in mind when it was originally built.  They had to dig up the pipeline.  Stabilize the ground with rock.  Install a new pipeline and finish off the grade with stable material.  This project was estimated to take 3-4 weeks.  With the conditions becoming extremely dry I estimate that the timeline will be closer to 3 weeks than 4.  This project was started somewhere around the 20th of August.  So, we are about two weeks into the project.  I know that the pond looks low right now, but I have seen it much lower before.  We are not at a critical level yet.  But if we do reach that point I'm sure that out partners at General Mills will find a way to temporarily relieve the issue if needed.
That's my over-worded answer to an simple five word question.

Why We Apply Roundup

Every winter we have a period of time where we spray almost the entire course with herbicides. What we are trying to achieve with this practice is the removal of all unwanted grass species, weeds. The definition of a weed is, any grass that is not desired in a certain area. In our case we want 419 Bermudagrass and Meyer Zoysiagrass as our two higher cut grasses. In order to maintain the two main types of desirable grasses we have to apply pre emergent and post emergent herbicides. Typically a stand of turf should have a pre emergent herbicide applied in the Spring and the Fall. Each one of these applications should last about 6 months. They prevent any new seeds from germinating in the soil. Unfortunately we only apply one pre emerge application per year. We couple this with a "Round Up" application in the dead of winter when the Bermuda and Zoysia are completely dormant. This way we can kill any weeds in the Bermuda and Zoysia without harming the desired turf. This year we are focusing on removing any of the existing over seeding from last year that may still be hanging around. I have a few pictures below to illustrate the timeline of damage.

This is the Chipping Area. It has not been sprayed with "Round Up" at this time. You can see the Ryegrass is nice and green.

This is the right edge of the Putting Green Collar. If you look carefully you can see the defined line in the middle of the picture where the "Round Up" has been sprayed 27 days ago. The right side of the line is Bentgrass in the collar that is starting to yellow out.

This is the front left corner of the Driving Range Tee. We sprayed the Range Tee with "Round Up" 33 days ago. You can see the Ryegrass that has yellowed and is very close to death.

It's Winter

Well it appears that the almanac was wrong. All I heard this fall was how the winter was supposed to be mild this year. That appears to be a load of hogwash. Between some of the bitter cold temperatures we have had and the last snow fall that lasted for 8 days we really haven't been able to accomplish much outside. We are supposed to be spraying roundup and a pre emergent herbicide on the course right now. Usually I start this practice on Jan. 1st, but, thankfully, I had our Chemical Technician start spraying Tees and Fairways back in December. since January we have only had 2 days that we have really been able to spray. For those two days we spent our time cutting in the greens edges, slopes and other tight areas on the course with roundup. Below is a picture of us cutting in #1 Green.

We have also had the chance back in December to start working on the Bunker Elimination Project. We have back filled the following bunkers; #2 green side, All of #3 fairway bunkers, the front right and back green side bunkers on #10. We have also started to define the bunkers that we are going to rebuild;#7 #10 front left green side, #12 green side, #13 green side.

Jim Mcelyea and I have created a kind of "Storyboard" that shows the projects and improvements that we would like to make to the course over the next few years. Hopefully this is a helpful communication tool for us both. It is located in the Golf Shop by the counter for anyone who would like to view it.

I have a few pictures posted below of the work we have been doing lately.

The future shape of # 7 Bunker.

The future shape of # 10 front left Bunker.

The future shape of # 12 green side Bunker.

The future shape of # 13 Bunker.

This is the result of our fescue natural areas that we planted back in September on # 3 and #4.

Roundup Application

Finally, the cold weather broke last week. Now we can go out and start spraying roundup on all of the dormant Bermuda grass on the course. We do this every winter to kill any existing weeds from last year. We started spraying out around the Tees late last week when the temperatures broke the freezing mark. Today we will begin cutting in around the Greens. We will have to divert traffic on the course for about an hour or so to allow the chemical time to dry on the plant. If we have premature traffic, we could see transfer of the roundup onto the Greens surface. This should only take us one or two afternoons to complete.