Fusarium Damage

While golfing in the winter months you likely notice the patches of damaged turf throughout the course.  The cause of this damage is a fungal turf disease called fusarium.  Left untreated, fusarium can and will cause significant damage that will not fully recover until conditions improve and appropriate corrective measures can be taken.  Our current budget affords us the opportunity to apply preventative fungicide applications to our greens and approaches.  Without these preventative applications, our greens would be devastated by the fungal pathogen and would be virtually unplayable.  Sometimes the disease pressure is so high that the preventative applications "wear off" sooner than anticipated and turf disease can literally "pop up" overnight.  When this happens, and it already has this winter, we must apply additional fungicide applications to clean up the damage and prevent more from occurring.  You can really see the effectiveness of our fungicide applications in the photo below:

#4 approach: turf on the left side is treated while the right is not

This evidence again reiterates the importance of fungicides to turf managers as part of our arsenal against these damaging pathogens.  Without them, golf as we know it today would be not be possible; that is the simple reality of it.  Golf courses would not fully recover from this type of damage until well into the summer months and shortly after that the high disease pressure would return and the damage would occur again.  We must also take preventative measures when it comes to anthracnose.  Anthracnose is another turf pathogen that causes significant damage and the pressure for it begins in the spring and carries on into the fall season.

I truly hope this helps everyone understand the importance of being able to properly apply control products against turf pests that we know will ultimately attack our turf.

That being said, we are walkmowing greens today; not bad for January 31st!  Unlike the rest of the country, our turf does not go dormant in the winter months and continues to grow.  Obviously the growth drastically slows down, but it does still require an occasional mowing.  I guess it's just one of the many perks of living on the west coast!

walkmowing #4 green

That's gonna leave a mark...

Well, here's one thing we sure don't need to worry about here at Quilchena.

I came across this photo of a golfer who thought it might be a good idea to play ball laying near a patch of Arizona cactus, or is it cacti?  Anyway, I'm sure he's now regretting this decision...

I wonder if removing them hurt more than falling on them!

Whiteout!

Well, Old Man Winter has decided to settle in for a bit.  We've been quite cold lately and as I am typing this we are in the middle of a fairly heavy snowstorm, at least for the lower mainland anyway.  Here's a pic of what we are experiencing right now:

January 18, 2012

The golf course has been closed since last Thursday and unfortunately, it doesn't looking promising for reopening anytime soon.  When things warm up and the snow does finally melt, there will be lots of surface water due to frozen turf and soil down below prohibiting it from draining.  Once the subsurface thaws, our drainage system will then quickly move the water off the course.

Keep your fingers crossed for a warm rain to speed things up!

The Dangers of Windy Conditions

On occasion we are forced to close the course due to extremely windy conditions.  The winds the course endured last night provided more evidence of why it is so important to do so.  Here is a photo of a tree that fell near #15 and #17 tee complex during last night's high winds:

30+ foot tall evergreen knocked down by 50+ km/h winds

Josh surveying the damage

Obviously this tree had wet feet and was very shallow-rooted, which undoubtedly contributed to it falling over, but we have many trees on this property in the same condition.  I'm just thankful that it happened overnight and not when the course was open for play.  Our policy is that we close the course when winds reach or exceed 65 km/h to ensure the safety of the golfers and staff.  The course then remains closed until either the Superintendent or Assistant Superintendent deem if to be safe and ready for play.  Keep in mind, even if the winds die down, we often need a fair amount of time to clear the playing surfaces of debris before they are playable again.

Now, where's the chainsaw?  We've got some cleanup to do!