Llanerch Golf Course and External Activities

As we enter the last day of 2013, I would like to review the past year of External Operations. Weather continued to be the dominate subject. A mild January, February and mid March had everyone excited about golf.  It was a March 25th 2 inch snow that stop all of us in our tracts! April and May the rough got really thick. We were warm and, for the most part, dry. It was late June, July and most of August were the rains came falling. We had over 20 days were the night temperature was over 70 degrees! In agricultural terms, that is a extremely hot. As many of you know, I am almost more interested (and concerned) about night temperatures than day temperatures. Then came an above average warm September and October. The leaves kept their fall color for longer than average which made the course look just beautiful! A normal temperate November and December with just one surprising 8 inch snow storm on December 8th wrapped up the year.  I would like to personal thank the Ground Maint...

The weather is going to go from cold, ice and snow to wet and warm by this Sunday. So the big question will be......when do you think we can play again? I promise to get everyone out as soon as the snow melts and we have a some dryer conditions. We will probably start off with walking only and then move to allowing carts. The staff and I will need some time to clean off the greens, tees and fairways before we get you out there. I will keep the Golf Shop up to date as to when we can play some golf! Thanks for your patience!

I don't even no where to start since my last post. We just got another 4 inches of snow after Sunday's epic and surprising 8 inch snow storm. The course is currently completely cover by snow and the cold night temperatures are not going to let it melt fast. We are concentrating on snow and ice removal and beginning the process of our annual equipment seasonal maintenance program. I will keep you updated as to when the course will reopen in the future.

I don't nee tell anyone that the weather is just terrible. The course got 3.25 inches of rain from yesterday afternoon until this morning! The course was flooded in many spot around 6am today but is starting to drain with the short lull in rain we are experiencing now. We will open for walking only today once the greens have no standing water. I would also like to extend a Happy Thanksgiving to all the members of Llanerch and all the other readers of this blog.

Yesterday looks to be the last time we will mow green for the foreseeable future. It also marked the last day for most of the Grounds Maintenance staff. As some of you might know, the seasonal staff is made of almost entirely H2B visa employees from Mexico. Ulises, Miguel, Alfredo, Yogi, Chewy, Eduardo, Luis and Tomas have been employees of Llanerch for any where between 3-7 years! They have always appreciated being part of the Llanerch Team. I can not thank them enough for their daily contributions. If there are no changes to the federal H2B visa program, I plan to see all of them next year. Muchas Gracias!

The staff just completed the restoration of the Center Circle area in front of the clubhouse. It has come a long way from when it was being used as a staging area for the restoration of the Clubhouse. Since the day the contractors left, we have been busy removing the old concrete slab that was in the middle and repairing the irrigation system. After preparing the soil for sod and doing some tree work, we have a new inviting entrance! I hope you all like it! 

Yesterday, the manufactures of the keystone green wall, that was install on 18, painted it green. This was done to "soften" the look of the wall until the plants grow in. Dan, Llanerch's horticulturist, planted all the flowers and ground cover inside the wall yesterday. Due to the fact it is almost winter, the plants can't grow until next spring and summer. That being said, we are very excited when the "vertical garden" is completely grown in in the near future!

Yesterday and today, we have been aerifying tees and the approaches. We plan to finish picking up all the soil cores today. The staff is also topdressing the areas with sand and brooming it into the holes. This helps drainage and improves the grass plant's roots.

As we enter the last week of October, most of the leaves are starting to change color and beginning to fall off. It seems at Llanerch that the leaves start to fall in large numbers right around Halloween and are almost finished by Thanksgiving. We have been spending most of our time chasing leaves, planting around the new patio and cleaning up around the Clubhouse construction. I am hoping that the patio planting will all but be finished by Thanksgiving.

This picture was taken from the right side of #18 green. We are adding new irrigation to water the green surround. The old irrigation had to be abandoned when we started the construction of the new patio. We spent today filling in the some of the trenches and sodding over them. We also planted three paperbark maple trees.

Today, we have spent the day mowing just about everything on the course. Dan, the horticulturist and other staff members are continuing the preparation of planting at the new patio. As I was over looking the new patio, I thought it was time to remove the large concrete circle that was in front of the Clubhouse. I never knew the true purpose of it or when it was installed. All I do know is that it is almost 10 inches thick concrete. Who ever built it, built it to last! We are hoping to have it totally removed by middle of next week.  

Yesterday we aerified fairways. We did not pull soil cores. It was just a 3/4 inch solid tine. We are rolling the fairways today and will start mowing them later this afternoon. The greens are healing from aerification at a steady rate. It is day 9 since we aerified them. It usually take between 13-18 day for them to completely heal. The weather is the big factor in determining the how long it will take. For the greens, a heavy rain would really help the process speed up. I don't see a good chance of rain in the forecast until Monday.

As you can see from this picture, we have begun to aerify greens today. We are using a 1/2 inch sized coring tine. I would characterize it as leaving a medium sized hole. We are adding sand to the greens to fill the holes. The sand helps water movement and speeds up the healing time. We should be reopened for golf by 8:00am on Thursday. Thanks for your patience. 

The Fall season has arrived! The cool night temperatures have slowed grass growth throughout the course but we are still busy mowing! We have seen the tulip poplars starting to drop their leaves and some other variety of trees begin to turn colors.The staff has been busy preparing for Doe Day (yesterday) and now focusing on Member- Member Tournament. We want wish all the participates good luck!

Well, it has been four long days since we got the 2.7 inch rain we received on Monday of Labor Day. I am proud to say that the course is almost 100% back in Championship shape! We still have a little bit of gravel that washed into the rough that was related to the Clubhouse renovation but the rest of the course is right on track! We hope you find time to fit in a quick 9 or full 18 in this weekend. Good luck to all the Championship Saturday participants!

This is the first tee at Llanerch at 11:34am yesterday! 2.7 inches of rain fell in a little over a hour on Monday! We are currently focusing on fixing the bunkers. The sand in every bunker has been washed out. I think it will take us any where from 2-3 day to redistribute the sand. I will being posting more updates on the course shortly.

Llanerch had 1.7 inches of rain fall on the course yesterday. We are cleaning up creek beds and green side bunkers as of today. We will finish the fairway bunkers tomorrow. Even with all the rain, we do have carts available at 8:00am. See you on the course!

As you might have noticed, some of the native ares have turned bleach white. The white color is a response to a product we applied to control bermuda in the fescue. Bermuda, the grass most of you play on in Florida, was planted back in the 1970s at Llanerch. The hope was that the bermuda would help in areas where cool season grasses would die in the summer. It never really established itself due to the cold winters. With the execption of a few winters over the last 10 years, we have had much milder winters and hotter summers. This has lead to bermuda encroachment into the fescue dominated native areas.  The bermuda then chokes out pretty much any other grass in its way. This product is a chance for me to try to "contain" it spread. I will have more updates and information over the next few weeks.

Today, we will be topdressing greens to help drainage and smooth the surface. We will also be preparing some areas in the rough for some sod that were damaged due to cart traffic . I have had many people ask me when are we going to aerify greens. I will not be aeifying any greens aggressively until AFTER Member -Member Tournament. That means we will get started some time after September 23rd. I will aerify tees in the next couple of weeks. I plan to aerify fairways in the first week of October.

More rain. It feels like I have been writing that same description of the weather in most of the updates this summer! Yesterday, Llanerch received  another 2 inches of rain. The bunkers are going to take a couple days to be fixed from all the water damage. I glad to report that after close to ten years from when they were originally rebuilt, they still completely drain out!  As some of you might not know, the bunkers also have a protective fabric that was installed all along the surfaces of the bunkers when they were rebuilt. The fabric reduces how much sand is washed and keep the soil base from mixing with the white sand. On a day like this, it continues to remind me how well these bunkers were constructed by our contractors. On another note, carts are allowed started at 8:00am today.

I took a quick ride up to Boston this weekend to assist in the course maintenance for the Untied States Amateur. The event is being held at The Country Club at Brookline where I was employed in the mid-1990's. I would like to personally thank Golf Course Superintendent William Spense for having me play a very small roll in presenting the course. The course is in fabulous shape! Mr. Spense and his Assist Superintendents have much to be proud of!

Just when the course started to dry out, it rained again! This time we got over 1.7 inches of rain. Unfortunately, we had to cancel the first round of the Senior Member-Guest tournament yesterday. Today, the course was just dry enough to get the second round in! We are busy fixing some minor wash outs of sand in bunkers and trying to catch up on mowing the course. We had to skip rolling greens today because of the rain but plan to roll this weekend to give members a smoother and faster surface. Enjoy your weekend!

Today marks the end of July and it has been one heck of a month! It will go down as the second wettest and the tenth hottest July in Philadelphia history. It is crazy to think that this July will still be the tenth hottest with the last 6 days being well below average in temperature. As for the golf course, we just completed light topdressing of the green and approaches. We have started our annual process of slit seeding the rough with tall type fescue grass. We hope to see you on the course soon!

I don't have to tell any one that it's really hot this week. We just tied the record of most days (26) in a row that the night temperature did not got below 70 degrees! I just came off the course to type this post at the temperature is 92 degrees but the heat index is 105 degrees when you consider humidity. The course has been holding in there pretty well considering the weather. I hope everyone enjoys what should be a bit cooler weekend! FYI.....the post picture is of the sun over 16 green taken at 5:58am today.

This picture says it all! We are in the second day of what looks to be a six day long heat wave. Yesterday we had a temperature of 95 degrees and a heat index of 101 degrees! As you can expect, the grass is not a big fan of this weather. To reduce stress on the turf, we will do most of our needed mowing in the morning when it is cooler outside. As I have stated before, we will not be rolling the greens until the heat wave is over but we are still mowing greens every day. Stay cool!

Just when I thought the course was starting to dry out, we were hit by over 1.1 inches of rain this morning. The rain only lasted roughly 45 minutes but did leave some wet conditions. The staff has just started to fix the sand in some bunkers that were washed out by the rain. We should have the bunkers in great shape by tomorrow morning. As you can expect, we have to restrict carts from the course today.  

Where did all that cool spring weather go? We just came out of a four day heat wave as defined by the regional weather service. From July 4th -July 7th we averaged highs in the low 90's and low temperatures in the lower 70's. When you add drenching rain, it is not exactly "ideal" grass growing weather but we are holding our own! We have spent most of our time "defending" the grass from heat stress damage. One of those steps was to not roll greens this weekend. We have always followed the rule that once it gets past 90 degrees, we stop rolling. We starting rolling the greens yesterday and today to help smooth them out. We are hoping to duck some of the possible thunderstorms over the next 48 hours so we can dry out and firm up a little more.

As I write this post, it is raining at Llanerch. We have received over 10 inches of rain in the month of June. This year's June is the wettest June since the NOAA kept records! How does this fact effect the golf course, you might ask. First, long periods of rain is not good for turf. The water pushes the oxygen out of the soil profile. The lack of oxygen makes the grass turn yellow and soft. This is why you see us aerify some of the wetter greens with very tiny aerification tines to promote air movement and help dry them out. Also, We will be adding more sand to certain areas to help drainage. Lets hope sunny skies are coming soon.

We have a new addition to the green complex on #18. It is a Breezemaster fan. This 7.5 horse powered fan creates a breeze that measures 150 feet. When you play 18 green, you will notice the a light wind blowing across the greens surface. This fan was installed to reduce the temperature on the green. Due to its close proximity to the clubhouse, 18 green has a soil temperature between 3-4 degrees higher than any other green. It might not sound like much but in the agricultural field, it is a huge difference. It can be the difference between a green being in good shape in late August or a green that has a thinning stand of grass. The fan will run 24 hours a day from now until late September. We purchased the "quietest" fan manufactured to keep it from being any kind of distraction. The fan is not a "silver bullet" when it comes to turf health but is another tool to assist us in our pursuit of good turf quality.

With the excessive heat, we have slowed down on our more "aggressive" practices. These practices include brooming, verticutting and topdressing greens, tees and fairways. The "mechanical" abrasion we create with these actions can add unnecessary stress to the grass plant. Also, the night temperatures are staying in the early 70s with humidity between 70-90%. This combination of temperatures and humidity can lead to turf damage if not managed properly. So, we continue to groom the course but in a bit more "defensive" way.  

Well, it has been an interesting and exciting past 10 days. I had both the honor and pleasure of being a volunteer for the United States Open at Merion last week. The week revolved around assisting the Merion and USGA staff setting up the tee and wicker locations. It was a great learning experience to observe how some of the best tournament officials determine how a US Open course should be set up.The course provide to be a true test for the PGA players. The course was nothing less than perfect. I want to personally thank Director of Grounds Matt Shaffer and East Course Superintendent Arron McCurdy for the opportunity to make a small contribution to the US Open. Hats off to them for a job well done!

After another 2.5 inches of rain yesterday on top of the 4 inches we received on Friday, the course is soaked. We are starting to mow as much of the course as possible.The fairways are untouchable. We will not be able to mow them until tomorrow. We are hoping to allow carts Wednesday in the morning. Will keep everyone posted.

After finishing topdressing all the greens and approaches yesterday, we turned our attention to the fairways. We are physically brooming the fairways to have the grass "stand up". Once we complete the brooming, we mow the fairways. This makes for a cleaner cut and smoother surface. We are hoping to broom half the fairways today and the rest tomorrow before the rain. 

We had grand plans to spread as much sand as possible yesterday but Mother Nature had other plans for us! We had over 1.5 inches of rain on Monday that really set us back from topdressing. Instead we spent yesterday and today reworking the sand in the bunkers that was moved by the heavy rains. Today, the sun came out and we started to spread sand. All the greens were verticut and lightly topdressed. We are also todpressing the approaches. This helps in provide a smoother surface and assists in draining the soil.

I hope everyone enjoyed their breezy and cool Memorial Day weekend! We spent the weekend trying to catchup with the ever growing rough. We have deployed green keepers to not just mow the rough but also blow the clippings so you can find your ball easier. I expect the rough to start slowing down with the arrival of so extreme heat later this week.

Between the cooler than normal spring and lack of rain (until just last week), tree pollen is ever where! For anyone who has allergies, it has been a tough few weeks. We have spent the last few weeks raking, mulching and blowing pollen. I am hoping the trees will be done dropping pollen in the next week or so. On the course, we have been concentrating on trying to keeping the rough at a manageable height. As with every May, the rough really starts to grow.

Today we will spend our time preparing for the potentially heavy rains. We will spread sand in low lying areas in the fairways, finish applying crabgrass pre-emergent products and packing down some bunkers. We also just finished painting the first coat on the big pool. The staff will concentrate on mowing as much as possible of the play surfaces. We do this because we feel we will miss a day or two of mowing due to wet conditions.

We start the last week of April with some rain. If you played the course in the last few days, you know that it was playing a bit firmer than usual. It was because of the sunny skies, low humidity, light breeze and us holding off using irrigation water. This current rain will "soften" the greens and fairways. I also expect to see the rough get really get thick over the next 10 days.

Over the weekend, we opened  9 green for play. The green is still a little slower than the others but will get faster as the season progresses. The green was closed for a couple days this week to allow us to do some more additional maintenance to it. We are opening it today and for the rest of the week and weekend. I hope you like the new par 5! 

We have spent the last three day topdressing fairways to improve playability and drainage. This is a long process but well worth it when comes to the increased ball roll and firmness. Last night, we received close to half an inch of rain but we still have carts today! The rest of the staff has been busy raking bunkers, sodding thin areas in the rough, mowing tees, greens and fairways.  We hope to see you on the course!

The snow has arrived at Llanerch again! We have 2 inches of snow on the ground as of 11:00 am today and its 34 degrees. This day last year, it was 62 degrees! The forsythia were already in full bloom and we had completed installing mulch. I am hoping will we see the forsythia blooms by the weekend and have mulch out by Friday. Then again, with this unpredictable weather, who knows!

Yesterday, we were able to accomplish aerifying all the greens and most of the fairways. We used a 3/4 inch solid tines on greens that went 7-9 inches deep into the soil. This assists drainage, gaseous exchange and promotes root growth. We added dry topdress sand to the greens to fill the holes. We also rolled the greens to smooth out the surface.  The fairways were aerified with a 3/4 inch solid tine. We will start topdressing fairways today and throughout next week. The course is open for play today at 12:00pm.

With the weather going from bad to worse in the past few days, we have postponed greens aerification until tomorrow. We plan to be finished aerifying, todressing and brooming the greens by noon on Friday. This is all weather dependent.  We are hoping to have the course open by noon on Friday. I am sorry for the delay. I will post an update tomorrow to inform everyone on how the aerification is proceeding.

Attached is a picture of the single stem arborvitae shrubs that are going to be planted along the fence on #5 and behind #5 green on Township Line. We spent yesterday planting these same type of shrubs along the fence parallel to #3 tee and some behind the #2 green to the left. The shrubs will help reduce the noise and reduce the view of the street. It will take until some time next week to finish these plantings.

Geese are a real problem at Llanerch. Over the years, we have tried many techniques to move them off property. I think the first step is provide information regarding the geese. I have taken the following description from the Upper Dublin Township website : Canada Goose Biology There are 11 sub-species of the Canada goose. The sub-species causing us concern in Branta Canadensi Maxima, the "Giant Canada goose." This group, the largest of the sub-species, was thought to be extinct until re-discovered in the late 1960's in Minnesota. Great efforts were then made to re-establish the "Giant." The United States Fish and Wildlife Service, state wildlife agencies and organizations such as Ducks Unlimited started a massive breeding program at state and federal wildlife refuge areas. Pairs of geese had their wings clipped, thereby allowing them to give birth to and raise generations of young in one area. These offspring were then imprin...

As you can see from this picture, 9 green grew quite well under the green cover. We have mowed it twice in the past three days. We will continue to mow it every other day for the next week or so while lowering the height each time. We plan to aerify it middle of next week. We will have a better idea when it will open for play in the next few weeks.

Well, today's weather was a real surprise! We expected to spend the day cleaning up smaller tree branches  and other debris from the high winds of earlier in the week but Mother Nature changed those plans. We measured about 0.75 inches of snow on the golf course this morning but are seeing most of it melting away now. The course will freeze over night and then start to thaw mid-day tomorrow. This will make the course very wet. I can't envision us having the use of cart at all tomorrow. Sunday will all depend if it gets windy and helps dry out the the course. I think will will need to get very lucky to have carts on Sunday. We will update the Golf Shop as soon as possible.

In today's post, the blog has a picture of the staff trenching #11 rough to add irrigation. This trenching skid-loader cuts roughly 18 inches deep into the ground. We then connect PVC pipe to the existing water service. After connecting communication wire and the actual irrigation sprinkler, all we need to do is add water into the pipe. We will then fill the trench and sod and seed the area. We plan to turn on the water for the entire irrigation system in about 2 weeks.

Windy days has produce some minor clean up that we are performing on the golf course today. We will be transition to adding irrigation to the area between 11 tee and 13 green in the rough later this week. The area has always been a very dry spot and the addition of some irrigation heads should go a long way to improving the grass' density. We also pulled up the greens cover on 9 green and were pleasantly surprised at the amount of growth on the putting surface. We will be removing the cover within the next few weeks to begin preparing it for play in the spring.

Yesterday, we were open for golf. Mother Nature closed it back down today. We got about 1 and half inches of snow. The course is completely cover but it should melt quickly over the next few days. Yesterday, we were also able to have Aradar Tree Service continue the process of removing damaged trees along Route 1. We plan to do more tree work in the upcoming season. 

The cold weather has made it's return! The past week has been nothing short of frigid! The ground that was wet and soft just ten days ago is now frozen rock solid. We still have patches of ice and snow in some areas. The crew spent their time finishing trimming trees along 5 fence line, behind 5 green and around the surrounds of 3 green. We will move indoors to clean, service and prepare the turf equipment for the upcoming season until the rain/snow passes. Next week we are starting to trench in some new irrigation throughout the course in perennially dry areas. I will be updating our progress next week.

The staff continues to use this warm break in the weather to trim trees along fence lines. Yesterday, they concentrated along the fence bordering the 3 tee. Today, they are working behind the left side of 2 green. We plan to add a combination of trees and shrubs in these places to create a "green" border with the neighbors. As for the course, we are open for walking only. The course is very wet from melting ground frost and snow.

The Staff is has been cleaning up the fence line along number 8. Over the last few days, we have trimmed trees, cleaned up leaves and pulled out weedy ivy. In the this picture (in the distance), you will see the tree chipper and dump truck grinding all the limbs. We had Aradar Tree Service also trim trees along Township Line and the corner of Edmonds Avenue.  We are also fixing some sections of the fence and are preparing to repair the broken fence along Township Line in the near future.

As the clouds try to clear out, we are left with a very wet golf course. We had close to 0.6 inches of rain since yesterday afternoon. Combined with the warmer temperatures, carts will need to be restricted until 11:30am. Why11:30? Well, each day myself and the assistants ride throughout the course to measure how wet and soft the ground is presently. After consulting with the weather forecast, we try to make an educated guess as to when a cart will not damage the turf. We like to think we get it right most of time but sometimes we are wrong. We try to balance not hurting the course today with not jeopardizing the course long term. It is similar on how we decide when to end frost delays. Thank you for your patience. 

As you can see from this picture, snow is still hanging around. This photo is of 3 green taken at 10:40 this morning. I think we still have a few days to wait to host golf.

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope that you and your families had a safe and happy holidays. The golf course still has snow in patches throughout. I think the weekend is still in question if it can accommodate play. It all depends on the night temperatures. We are getting some melting during the day but then it becomes ice at night. I will keep the Golf Shop updated on when we can reopen.