Tis the season

Canyon Crest Maintenance would like to wish all of our members a very Merry Christmas! Thank you for your generosity of cards and gifts. The course will be closed on Christmas and will re open on Saturday. Looks like we have some clear and cold nights coming up. This will most likely lead to some frost.

Rain Rain here to stay?

So far in the past week we have had totals including as of this morning almost 3/4" precipitation. The positive of the rain is the consistency of which all turf around the course receives a uniformed cover of water. The down side is if there is to much at one point we have cart path only, no carts. The turf does not recover well in soft shady areas because of the simple fact that the water has almost no where to go except for evaporation. Most of you know already that evaporation is so low this time of year it could take a few weeks for these areas to handle play and traffic. Looks like there is more rain on its way at the end of the week.

speed/water

Greens are rolling 13.4 and we have not watered in 9 days. We might have them a touch quicker for the xmas bash this Saturday. Watch out......

Blog updates

We will now be offering a similar version of the blog that will be up in the golf shop. Be on the look out as there are some very good topics. Ball marks, frost delays, growth pattern, etc. We also have business cards in the golf shop with the blogs address. Please spread the word around so our membership knows what is going on and why things are the way they are. We should have it posted by the first of this year.

Building the short game bunker. Work in progress......

New short game area

We are very close to opening the new short game area. It is located between #5 and #9. It has three areas to chip from at approach height. Rough, and we will be building a greenside bunker in the few weeks to come. We hope that by the first of the year it will be ready to go. Lastly we slowed down our greens to 13.5. Check out the pics of the new short game area

growing conditions

The fairways are looking a little better. We fertilized last week and sprayed the green turf pigment just yesterday. With the warmer weather the first part of this week we should see much improved conditions. The first part of next week we will be addressing holes #1,2,3,10 with cart path only until further notice. Greens are now rolling at 13.7.

Green Speeds New Tee

The greens speeds are the fastest we have ever recorded. A staggering 15.4. They must slow down, and they will. We will back off to a goal of 13.5 by this weekend. When they get in the upwards of 13+ there are a few greens with very little hole locations or even none at all. Hole #16 with very few spots. Also with the grass not growing almost anywhere it has aloud us to focus on detail work as well as projects. We are currently building a new "optional" teeing area for hole#5 behind the cart path. It should make the hole play about 20-25 yards longer.

Greens Speed Lightning

Fast Fast Fast. Greens rolling 13+ on an everyday basis for the past few weeks. They are also firming up with our last day of any water on them was this past Wednesday. Not only are they fast but if you hit your line they are going in. It is great this time of year to not have to worry as much about them, but it leads to no growth elsewhere especially in our fairways. Ill take a guess and say our fairways are rolling at a 6 but as we our playing golf please keep in mind of the 90 degree rule. Especially in the shady spots holes 2,10, and 18. Golf carts must not drive in these areas and we will rope off these areas in the weeks to come. Lets hope for a mild winter in the next few growing months.

Cold Weather

As the cold weather continues to stick around here at the course, the issues of getting any type of growth in our turf continue to get more difficult. We have applied one application of turf pigment on our fairways. Another application is set for this Monday the 30th. The pigment that we use (Sarge 2.0) is mostly for aesthetic purposes, but does also help a minimal amount in using the suns rays warm up the plant to protect against dormancy. We will be trying to help aid our warm season grasses from getting thin by hopefully controlling cart traffic with ropes and stakes. In these cold winter months, the grass has little to none ability to recover from wear and tear. Below I have posted our weather forecast that we use for the next 5 days. As you can see in the section "WARM GP", which is warm season "growth potential" (0-100%), our warm season grass does not have the ability to actively grow in the type of weather. We have not mowed our fairways in 2 1/2 weeks, and our next mow may possibly be at the end of next week.

Forecast: Next 5 Days

	11/26 Thu	11/27 Fri	11/28 Sat	11/29 Sun	11/30 Mon
Max F	62	59	62	64	66
Min F	40	36	40	40	42
Avg F	51	48	51	52	54
Max C	17	15	17	18	19
Min C	4	2	4	4	6
Avg C	11	9	11	11	13
Cool GP	24	14	24	28	38
Warm GP	1	0	1	1	2
Conditions	Clear	Clear	Clear	Clear	Clear

Weather data provided by The Weather Underground.

Hydraulic Hose Break

On Saturday morning, we had a hydraulic hose bust on our triplex greens mower. Since we are out before the sun rises, the leak was not visible until more daylight was present. We acted very quickly once the leaks were spotted on our greens. We used some activated charcoal along with some other products to help neutralize the toxicity of the oils on the plant. That morning, the temperature was in the 40s, which meant the oil was not as hot as if it were summertime.  We feel very comfortable that we have done everything we possibly can, in a timely manner, to help this unfortunate situation. These kind of things are unavoidable when using greens mowers powered by hydraulics, the hoses get old and will eventually break. We will continue to monitor #9 and #4 green on a day to day basis, with hopes of saving these greens. Updates will be given as soon as any progress is made. 

Traffic vs. Turfgrass

Pity the poor turf: Foot and vehicular traffic are a constant source of stress to turf. There are several types of traffic-related damage, the most important of which are wear damage and soil compaction. Wear damage: ouch! Would you rather get a paper cut or a scrape? Most people would pick the paper cut because it hurts less, occurs on a smaller area, and heals faster. The same principles apply to turf. A well sharpened mower causes minimal injury because it provides a clean cut on a small surface area – like a paper cut. But the type of damage caused by foot and cart traffic results in bruising and tearing of turf that causes plant tissues to lose water as well as the chlorophyll they need for photosynthesis. Plant death is the result. Soil compaction is heavy stuff: Traffic also compacts soil par-ticles so tightly that water and air can’t move in or out of the soil, and plant roots can’t penetrate the rock hard soils. With no root growth, the plant suffers from lack of nutrients and water, which in turn results in slower growth, inability to recover from injury and eventually, death. You can be part of the solution: Golfers can help improve course performance by following these traffic guidelines: • When requested, keep golf carts on path. • When entering and exiting fairways, scatter to avoid multiple carts driving on the same tracks. • Follow cart traffic directions. • When walking on and off greens and tees, avoid walking on areas of stressed turf. • Comply with frost delays. Bottom line: Foot and golf cart traffic cause damage to turf by scraping and ripping leaf tissues, as well as by compacting the soil. But by implementing traffic management strategies, turf damage can be minimized. Limiting carts to paths, using ropes to rotate traffic into less-used areas, frost delays and avoiding stressed turf when walking or driving are effective tools for limiting traffic damage. Traffic damage can be a big problem on golf courses, but by cooperating with these traffic management strategies, golfers can be a part of the solution

Updates

The greens have been nothing but great after aerifaction. They were completly healed within 10 days of coring and you cannot tell we even aerified now. Much thanks to mother nature and the good growing weather. The greens were stimped this past Saturday am rolling 10.2. As most of you know when we get to a winter we will have them in upwards of 12 plus on the stimp. The tees were overseeded this year at 625 pounds per acre. They also had a great grow in thanks to the weather. We are currently mowing them at 3/4" and will get down to almost a 1/2" in the next few weeks. Lastly there will be more trafficing with ropes, stakes, and chains in the next few weeks. This is in aid to keep the best possible conditions in our fairways for the winter months. In our next blog we will go in depth as to the benefits of doing this.

Successful Green Aerification and Tee Overseeding

It has been a couple weeks since the last post, but as you could imagine, these have been a very busy and important couple weeks for the golf course as we prepared ourselves for the winter ahead of us. We aerified our greens Sept 23rd and 24th. We used a smaller size tine than usually done here, but the holes were spaced closer together. We anticipated with the size and spacing to remove just under 10% of the surface area on our greens. Ideally you want to remove 20% of the surface area per year on your greens. The greens have healed up nicely a week later and look very healthy. The greens will be back down to the normal mowing height tomorrow morning and we can then start working on the greens normally and get back to a truer and consistent roll.

The tees were overseeded Sept 29th and 30th. We have roped off all of our tees to keep traffic off the seed.

 We have been watering constantly throughout the day to keep the seed moist. We are already starting to see some germination on most of the tees just a week later. We anticipate to get our first mow on the tees around the October 14th.Until then we want to thank everybody for there patience and cooperation during these very frustrating weeks (as a golfer)!! We are very pleased to call this aerification and overseedng a huge success and it should show out on the golf course throughout these upcoming weeks and months!

RAIN GOOD VS. NOT SO GOOD

Rain can be good and not so good. The good part for the course was that it was steady, not to damaging, and totaled 1 1/2". The not so good part is the fact that this weekend is one of are biggest events of the year the Member Guest. We hope that the course will firm up by the weekend and most importantly the greens. We will keep an eye out with our moisture meter going in to the weekend to get the greens as firm and fast as possible. We have extra staffing set up this weekend, and should be able to double mow and roll both days. Are greens before the rains were rolling 9.4 and we anticipate getting them to a 10 by the weekend. Just a reminder that greens aerifaction is next week and has been pushed back one day in the process due to the rain. Now being next Wednesday and Thursday. Also the overseeding of the tees has been pushed back one more week to the 29th. We will still be prepping our tees the remainder of time before overseeding. I hope everyone that participates enjoys the condition of the course and the guests especially. We have been very diligent in improving golf course conditions not only from a players standpoint, but turf health as well. Good luck!

Birds, skunks, possums, oh my.....

Over the past few weeks we have unfortunately had a bug problem in the fairways. There are two grubs one called white grub, and the other a bill bug. These are not only detrimental to the tufts that the animals are pulling out and up in the fairways, but also the grubs feed on the root system. We will be spraying an insectidie app tomorrow and this should elimnate both animal activity and kill the grubs. Please take a look at the pictures. If you have any questions in further you know where to find me.

Tee Aerification Prep

Just wanted to give a heads up to everybody about what will be going on for our tees in the next couple weeks. In order to prepare for a successful over-seeding to our tee boxes, a lot of work will have to be done. We will slowly start scalping down all of our tee boxes, almost down to the soil. The tees will all be verticut to go along with the scalping. We will also be spraying a selective herbicide to the tees. All this work is necessary in order to give us a good blank canvas to work with for our aerification.  The tees will still be all level and ready for play, they just may not be looking the best from an aesthetics stand point.  We anticipate by the middle of October our tees will in prime condition.

What's Missing?

As a few of you may have noticed, we had two limbs removed from the over hanging tree off of number 8 tee box. Although it may not look like much, this allows the left side of the tee box to be used with out much interference from the tree. 

BIRDS

In the past few weeks there has been a strong bug population on our course. In specific, this time of year they lay there larvae in the soil. This is always happens and we then spray insecticides on our greens to kill the larvae. The reason we do spray is if not the larvae will eat the roots in our greens and thus effecting the health and quality of the turf. Please take a look at the picture. This was before we sprayed.

Course/Greens Update

Here is an update on what has been done to our greens this past week. The greens have been rolled everyday at least once since we have received our new rollers last Thursday. Today we were able to verticut, topdress, and drag in the sand on our greens, followed by another roll. The topdressing should give us a bit more of a firmer and smoother surface for our greens heading into the weekend. Today the greens were stimped at a 9.7 at about 12:30 PM. Now to address some of the areas in our fairways. Although these areas may be unsightly, this is what was expected from theses areas considering our current mowing heights, mowing frequency, and irrigation program. We have been running our irrigation programs to about 75% of what the actual daily ET is. Combined with how low our mowing heights are (.400), the cool season grass simply can not survive in the summer heat. It may not look the best, but this is very beneficial to our long term goal of being 100% warm season grass in our fairways. Some of these areas are being marked Ground Under Repair for the time being. Once again we appreciate any and all comments about the golf course!

Updates

It has been a few weeks since the last post and we wanted to get back on track. Our new rollers came in this past Thursday and we have rolled everyday since. We went from a 9.2 on the stimp to an impressive 10.3 just yesterday. Not only did we increase a foot in speed, we also are more true with ball roll throughout the day. We are very excited with our new equipment and the results that it has shown. Lets also keep in mind that there are three more months to go until we get a break in the heat. On the horizon is overseeding of tees in early October, coring of greens in late September, and lastly getting prepped for winter. Winter? Yes, we will be raising up mowing heights in our fairways starting September to improve in the aid of golf car traffic, and keeping the healthy kikuya grass growing as long as possible. This all has to do with mother nature. The longer we have mild days is the better for the course and its growing conditions. Thank you all for you abiding by all our ropes, chains, and stakes out on the golf course. There has been a drastic improvement with keeping turf alive were we have never had it before. Check the blog out again later in the week, we should have more pictures to show you.....

Rainy Weekend

The course was hit with just under 2 inches of rain over Saturday and Sunday. Most of the heavy rain was on Sunday afternoon, which left us with a lot of clean up out on the course on Monday. #12 fairway is currently flooded, and because of that the hole will be played as a par 3 until further notice. The rain came at an unfortunate time, just when we were finally getting our green speeds back up (our roller is now back up and running). Last Thursday and Friday mornings the greens were stimped at 10 1/2 ft, this morning the greens were stimped at 9 ft, just after a double mow and roll. The slower speeds are obviously because of the moisture in our greens after the weekend. We are confident we will be able to get the green speeds back up, and will follow up with our green speed progression throughout the week as we wait for our greens to dry up.

#12 fairway Monday morning

#12 fairway view from the green 

Fairway/Rough Definition

Here is a look of what our new clean up pass in the fairways look like using our smaller triplex mower. 

View of #2 fairway, looking back from #2 green.

Fairway striping

We wanted to finally get a definition on are fairway line from the edge of the rough. We have played around with several ideas and it is very difficult to acheive this on kikuyagrass. This past Tuesday we experimented mowing the clean up pass or outer edge of the faiway with a smaller and slower mower. The results were tremendous and alot of great reviews from members, and staff. We are implenting this in our program which will be done on a regular basis. Things are shaping up out there and the warm season grass is dominating over the poa/rye. There is alot of positive things that are going on with the golf course and we will continue to improve.

Greens Roller Down, So Are Green Speeds

We have been without our greens roller for about a week and a half now. On June 20th, the main hydraulic hose busted on our 17th green. The green was re sodded with sod from our new bentgrass nursery. With our roller currently out of service, our greens have lost a little bit of speed. The greens were stimped today at 10.4 at 11 o'clock. Keep in mind that with this weather, our greens are growing tremendously throughout the day. A green can lose up to about 2 feet of speed throughout a good growing condition day. We will be keeping up with our applications of growth regulators on our greens throughout the summer and this should help keep the speeds up. Once we can get our roller back up and running, the greens speeds should jump back up as well. Until then we appreciate your patience with slower (not slow) green speeds.

HEAT

It has been rather hot all week and will continue for a while. With that we have to take care of the golf course just like we take care of ourselves in this heat. Hydration, fertilization, wetting agents, fungicides, etc. Although we are irrigating more it is a necessary to keep the plant health to recover from the heat. We are still on our program with our moisture meter consistently monitoring the moisture in the greens. The greens were stimped this morning rolling at an 11.

Mowing heights?

These are the current mowing heights that we will cut are grasses with throughout the summer Greens: 1/8" Tees: 7/16" Fairways: 7/16" Green Surronds: 1.5" Roughs: 1.75" We slightly raised the greens mowers due to the hotter temps to promote healthier turf. This will aid in yeild, recovery from heat stress, disease resistance, etc. We adjusted them by exactly 5/1000 of an inch. Does not sound like much but It makes a world of differnce

Take a look

Last nigh a sprinkler on the bank of the driving range stuck and ran through the night. We will be cleaning this up today and re fill/plant within the next month once the soil settles.

green speeds

It is that time of year again, SUMMER. We are on a great program with the greens for 2015. Some new additions in fertilizer blends, growth regulators, wetting agents, water retention agents, cultural practices, etc. It looks like alot but this is what it takes to keep the consistency and health of the turf going this time of year. We have slighlty raised the mowing height in aid of plant health, but have only lost a little of speed. Currently are greens were stimped at 10.9 which this time last year we were at 9.0. It is a great sign of things to come for keeping the speed and concistency all summer long. We would also like to give you a sneak preview of what will be "rolling our greens" starting July.

Bunker update!

We have been on hold for a few weeks now with our addition of more sand into the greenside bunkers. As most of you know we have had the front nine greenside bunkers completed for almost a month. The back nine greenside bunkers have been on hold as we have to keep up on our mowing schedule with the increase in temperature. It looks like on June 22nd Monday will be are next go at it with the course being closed that day. Why are we doing this you might ask? Well it is long overdue, plain and simple. We have gone from almost dirt (native soil) to TONS of sand. The bunkers are composed of "washed plaster". The cavity or low spot of the bunker should have an adequate amount being 4-6" in depth, and the face or slope should have 1-2" in depth. You never want to contaminate this sand with any other soils, so when we have fresh sand to start with it becomes like a sand pit. Balls plug, bury, etc. When you give it time and its almost been a month the sand will compact with water. We now are at a 3-4" base and the sand is becoming more consistent. Throughout the summer we will continue to work on firming the sand up but please be patient with this. You must remember you cant go from bad to good overnight.

Fairway Lines

You may have all noticed a lot of red markings through out the golf course in our fairways. The paint is to help our mowers consistently cut the same edges of our fairways.This will help distinguish the difference between our rough and fairways. We are hoping to see a difference once we start to get some warmer weather and some growth out here on the course.

Club Championship

With our Club Championship starting today, I just wanted to give an overall course update. Over the last couple weeks we have been working on our greens day after day to keep up our green speeds. Yesterday the greens were stimped at 11.4 feet. We have started our summer long topdressing program to give a more consistent and true roll. The greens will be top dressed every 2 weeks. The fairways have responded well with the fertilizer we will begin to apply every other week. The fairways are now being mowed at under 1/2 an inch. We have been able to avoid any scalping in our fairways with gradual lowering of the height of cut. The lower cut should help eradicate some of the cool season grass in our fairways, which will help with the clumpiness. Good luck to all the participants this weekend!

Bunker Project Update

Currently all green side bunkers on the front 9 of the golf course have had sand added. Although it may appear that there is now too much sand in the bunkers now, a couple weeks from now when the sand is more compacted and more worked in, the bunkers will be right where we want them to be. We will continue to work on the green side bunkers on the back 9 at the start of next week. Here are a few pictures of our guys working on # 2 green side bunker. The sand is being piled in one load at a time, then moved around to the necessary spots.

Bunker Project

80 tons of sand was dropped off here yesterday morning. Over the next couple of months we will slowly start working on our bunkers here at Canyon Crest. Our 36 green side bunkers will be our primary focus the first couple weeks. We hope you will start seeing improvements right away as we work the sand in. As for the an update on the course, we continue to have some firm conditions out on the golf course. Our greens were stimped yesterday morning at 11.5 feet. With warm weather on the way next week, we should expect some pretty good growth throughout the golf course. Also, we would like to thank every one for their participation in the Member-Member this past weekend, hopefully you all enjoyed the course conditions. Thank you for all the feedback we have received, good or bad. Here are a few pictures of the sand dropped off yesterday.

Drought Conditions

With California being in a water crisis as of late, we are doing our part in trying to cut back on our watering. Although we will not go as far as Pinehurst did last year for the U.S. Open, we are hoping to make an impact here at Canyon Crest. We are projecting to cut over 25% of our water output on the course this summer. We will try to rely primarily on hand watering in dry areas on the golf course to cutback on over watering in the areas that do not need the water as much. That is something we can not really control using regular irrigation heads. The color of the course may not be easy on the eyes for some, but the course will play much firmer and faster, primarily with our fairways. Golfers will now enjoy an extra 5 to 10 yards if they can find the middle of the fairway.

Greens/Course Update

It has been a full week since we aerified our greens, and the holes are filling in nicely. We had our first mow on our greens yesterday and have started to gradually lower our height of cut. We are projected to be back down to our normal greens height by this coming weekend. We have not got a stimp reading on the greens due to the current conditions. We will be getting back to our daily stimp readings early next week in order to work our way back to firm and fast conditions. Also, next week the height of cut on other areas of our golf course in order tighten up our turf. A growth regulator will be applied to our fairways tomorrow to help us out add some density to the turf.

Aerification

We have just about wrapped up the work we will do to our greens for spring aerification, and are very happy with where the greens are at right now. The work was all completed with very few, if any, minor speed bumps. The greens are ahead of schedule to heal up back to normal due to the current weather. A high end fertilizer application was put on our greens to assist the healing process. Our greens were stimped at 12.4 just before we aerified, and we expect to be able to gain back the firmness and those speeds once the greens are back to normal. We will start gradually mowing our greens back down to the normal cut height throughout the week.

Course Update

Our greens have firmed up quite a bit, and with it, faster green speeds. The greens were stimped at a 12.1 on Wednesday. We have been keeping up with our cultural practices of verticutting, mowing, and rolling our greens to give us more of a consistent roll. The warm weather has given us some pretty good growth out on the course. Our warm season grass is responding well to the weather. We have removed a good amount of ropes and stakes out on the course now that these areas are a little more wear tolerant. These conditions are setting us up for a smooth aerification, which is less than 2 weeks away. We will aerify Monday March 23rd, and Tuesday the 24th. We just put out a wall to wall fertilizer application this last Monday, which should give us a nice green up and growth with in the next coming week.

New Bentgrass Nursery

Thank you to UCR Turf Department for the generous donation of about 5,000 square feet of creeping bentgrass sod that we are creating new nursery greens with. Here are some photos of the work we did to transplant it over to Canyon Crest.

   The bentgrass nursery at UCR testing facility

   Canyon Crest crew starting to sod cut and roll the turf

    Sod was loaded up upon 3 of our trucks to transport to the areas on the course

    Almost done transporting 

    Sod being rolled out in designated areas 

  #5 finished up

  #8 finished 

Finally!

The netting has finally been completed on #17 tee! You will also notice that two Italian Cypress were planted alongside the netting to aid in no balls going left. The trees will make some difference right now but it will take a few years to make a significant impact. The back tee has been leveled on the left and we will be taking about 1/3 of the right side of that tee. This will now aim you down the right center of the fairway versus before when the tee shot was directed to the green. A bit different look, but a necessary one. We have been very aggressive with our cultural practices with the greens. I have adjusted the verticut mower lower to move more plant material as well as limit the amount of seed heads. We also had to apply a growth regulator to eliminate any more seed head growth. The warmer weather has helped with early fairway recovery from winter but at the same time has slowed down the greens a bit. The greens were stimped this morning rolling 10.9 feet. Last week they were almost at a 12.

good weather = growing grass

This week the highs have been in the mid 80's. With that we have had a nice response from the warmer weather, water, and fertilizer. The course is in good condition and mother nature has helped tremendously with that. The greens have also had a slight spike in growth and we have been noticing some seed heads from the poa annua. We sprayed early this week and with the aid of some aggressive verticutting we have been able to maintain speeds and consistency throughout the day. The greens were stimped yesterday at 1:00 p.m. rolling 12 feet!

#2/3 Planter Finished

Here is a finished look at the planters behind #2 tee box and leaving #3. We removed all previous plants and planted more native, drought tolerant species. 

#2 planter

I hope everyone has had a chance to view our new look in the planter beds. If you have not seen already please check out behind #2 tee and #3 green as we are in the process of removing cleaning up the planter. We will be finishing up next week with mulch and drought tolerant plants. I'm excited to get some color back in these areas on the course. Hope you all like the new look!

Warmer Weather

Over the last couple weeks, the weather has continued to be a little on the warm(er) side then what we had a couple weeks ago with the frost. The course has started to dry out a bit from our rainy weather. Number 12 is now dry enough to be played as a par 4 again. We have also noticed a little bit of a growth spurt, specifically on our greens. The poa has begun producing some seed heads. Rather than spray chemicals to control it, as we would during the growing season, we will lean on cultural practices to control the seed heads. We verticut our greens this morning and will do so again tomorrow morning. Our greens were stimped at 12 PM rolling at 11.8 feet today.

Planter Beds

Last week we were finally able to add some life into our planter beds out on the course. Here are some pictures and descriptions of what plants were planted. Wood chip mulch was also spread out to add some color.

                                                      #1 Regal Mist

#9 Dracaena Palms

#17 Mexican Feather

COLOR CHANGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The golf course had 7 of 8 days this past week with frost. All warm season grasses were affected by the sub freezing temps. Just two weeks ago we had been mowing fairways and now there is hardly anything to mow. Our fairways are almost all Bermuda/Kikuya and with the frost the lies are becoming tighter. Yesterday we sprayed another fertilizer app and with the warmer temps the first part of this week hopefully we can get some turf growth. Our greens were stimped at 12 p.m. yesterday rolling 11.7 feet.