Bat Houses & Naturalized Areas

It's no doubt that our golf course provides the highly populated and developed city of Richmond with some much needed green-space, but did you know it also provides an ideal habitat for wildlife?  Along with our resident swan, coyotes and bird species, this year alone we have spotted great horned owls, sandhill cranes, great blue herons, snakes (non-poisonous) and even a beaver!  Many of these critters only visit us for a day or two, but at least they find what our course provides inviting enough for them to stop in. 

In a continuing effort to "go green", this coming Monday (June 4th) we will be installing two bat houses at the far west end of the property along the dyke.  We hope the bats will recognize our generosity of providing them with a nice and cozy place to live, and in return will help us to reduce the summer mosquito population.  Each one of these bat houses can house up to 300 bats and each bat can consume up to 1,200 mosquitoes in just 1 hour!  The quick math on that results in the bats from our two houses consuming up to 720,000 mosquitoes an hour and 17,280,000 mosquitoes in a day!  Obviously they don't feed for 24 straight hours, but the numbers are still impressive.

According to Canadian Bat Houses: "Bats are nature's most effective defense against a variety of airborne pests as well as mosquitoes carrying the West Nile Virus.  A bat house is an environmentally friendly method to promote mosquito and other pest control.  A well-designed bat house will attract bats to the area, and is complimentary to an new or existing pest control program.  The purpose of a bat house is to provide bats with shelter that makes an excellent place for 'roosting'.  Bat houses are usually occupied in the summer months when bats are not hibernating."  Here is a link to see what type of bats we can expect to see occupying the houses: http://www.scbat.org/bats-species-of-the-south-coast/

little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus)

We are starting with two of these houses, but plan on adding more in the very near future.  The houses are 41" tall and 18.5" wide, so they will not go unnoticed.  Here is a photo of what the houses look like:

You are probably asking yourself, "Is the bat symbol really necessary?"  Yes, it is.  The bat symbol actually plays a role by deterring wood peckers and other birds from damaging the hollow house.  These bat houses are also the only Bat Conservation International certified houses made in Canada.

Erin Rutherford and Doug Sinclair from The South Coast Bat Action Team visited us this past Monday to help us choose locations on the course best suited for the houses.  One will be installed on the first tree north of the opening we created at #4 green and the other will be located in the former "eagle tree" in the naturalized area at #5 tees and behind #4 green.  Erin and Doug have also generously offered to help us monitor them for the first year as the houses become inhabited.

Speaking of naturalized areas, that's exactly what I'd like to discuss next.  We have carefully selected more areas on the golf course to "naturalize", mainly at tee complexes and areas that are considered for the most part to be out of play.  Golfers are not prohibited from entering these areas to look for and play their ball, just be sure that it is not marked as part of a nearby hazard to avoid a penalty by grounding your club.  These areas will be marked with dashed (not solid) red lines for our mower operators to easily identify them only as they establish.

"Naturalized" DOES NOT MEAN NO MAINTENANCE REQUIRED.  These areas will still be treated for noxious weeds and will occasionally be cut down.  That being said, they do require less maintenance as they will not be mowed regularly and require very little water and fertility.  They provide improved aesthetics throughout the course by adding definition and some colour via the wildflowers we introduce into them.  Here is a photo of the established naturalized area at #6 and #9 tees taken last week:

fescue grasses and wildflowers

As always, your feedback is important to us, so if you have any questions or concerns please contact either myself (jhooper@qgolfclub.ca) or Josh (jwebb@qgolfclub.ca) and we will be happy to get back to you!

Upcoming Maintenance Morning Tasks

We have an extremely busy Maintenance Morning planned for next Monday (May 28th).  Here are a few of the tasks we have scheduled:

• TDS West will be on-site to complete the sand-banding project on #9 and #18 approaches.  The sand-banding will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our slit drainage system in areas where thatch levels are deemed to be higher than normal.  To learn more about this process, here is a link to a previous blog post I wrote about it: http://qgolfclub.blogspot.ca/2012/03/another-drainage-update.html 

• We will be slit-seeding and fertilizing the grass teeing area on the practice range very heavily to improve the density of the turf as we continue to work on re-opening it for play.  Unfortunately, we have not been able to dedicate as much time to the range teeing area as we'd hoped to this spring, but now that we have caught up on many of the course duties, we will be spending lots of time on it.  I am not going to predict when we will re-open it, but rest assured that it will be in the best possible condition before we do.

• We will also be removing approximately 3' of bunker liner, a.k.a "fluff", from the edges of the fairway bunkers on #1.  This is where the crows and other birds have been aggressively digging it up and tearing pieces of it out for their nests.  We anticipate this will solve the liner problems, but we will continue to monitor them to see if we need to take further action.

• Another cultural practice scheduled for Monday is verti-cutting the tees.  This process removes organic matter (thatch) by thinning out the turf canopy.  Verti-cutting is a method of mowing with a set of vertically mounted blades that cut into and perpendicular to the surface of the turf.  Here is what a verti-cutting reel looks like closeup:
  
  

  

  series of thatch removing vertically mounted blades

  
  
  This slicing action removes organic material at a depth that can be adjusted based on how aggressive you'd like to get.  We will be verti-cutting the tees at a depth of 1/8" today, which may not sound that aggressive, but I assure you that this removes a lot of material.  Here is a photo of the organic material removed from only 4 greens last fall at a depth of 1/16":
  
  

  

  thatch harvested from only 4 greens

• Finally, we hope to also slit-seed the tees behind the verti-cutting process.  This may or may not happen though if the verti-cutting process moves slower than we anticipate.

All that being said, as of today (Thursday, May 24th), the forecast is calling for 5-10mm of rain on Monday so many of these scheduled tasks may be postponed anyway!  Maybe I'll budget for a dome for the golf course next year so weather can no longer hinder our progress!

UPDATE: New Bunker Sand Currently Unavailable

Well, things were progressing nicely with regards to adding sand to our greenside bunkers, but we've come to an abrupt halt with this process as our Baja Tan bunker sand is currently not available to order.  The initial 40 tonnes we ordered in mid-April has been used up on holes #6 through #18, with the exception of a couple tonnes set aside to complete the bunker drain repair on #4 this week.  When we attempted to place the order for 40 more tonnes last week, we were informed that they are experiencing issues with the mining of our particular sand.  We've been told it could be available as soon as tomorrow or up to 90 days from now.  We will be in constant contact with our aggregate supplier to ensure we receive our sand as soon as it is once again available.

In case you are asking yourself, "Why the heck can't we just use another bunker sand that IS available?", here are a few reasons why:

1. Aesthetics.  The obvious answer is that the other bunker sands won't "colour match" with our sand and even "diluted" with ours, the results would not be aesthetically pleasing. 
2. Different sands have different physical characteristics.  When mixed together, we run the risk of compromising the drainage capability of our bunkers.  This is certainly not a risk worth taking as many of our bunkers already don't drain that well.
3. COST.  The Baja Tan bunker sand is priced right for our budget.  Using a more expensive sand wouldn't be very cost effective, especially for bunkers that are well overdue for renovation.

While I'm on the topic of bunkers, I'd like to briefly discuss the liner issue we are experiencing in the fairway bunkers on #1.  I guess you could call this one of those ongoing issues as I wrote a blog post about this liner issue when we started experiencing problems with them last summer: http://qgolfclub.blogspot.ca/2011/07/reason-58-why-i-despise-crows.html.

Well, we've tried to do a few things differently to deter the crows and other birds from digging up our liners for their nests, but unfortunately, nothing seems to have worked as well as we had hoped.  We will be removing approximately 3 feet of the liner from around the perimeter of the bunker as this is where it is most accessible to them.

 

bunker liner being dug up and ripped out by birds for their nests

This process is a tedious one as we must first pull back the bunker sand and then carefully cut the liner out without disturbing the subgrade to avoid contamination.  In fact, this is why we installed a liner in these two bunkers in the first place.  The base material that these bunkers were shaped from was quite contaminated with stones.  The liner was installed to prevent the stones from migrating up through the bunker to keep the sand as clean as possible.  Golfers striking stones in bunkers can cause injury and obviously affect the playability of the sand too.  Believe me, I have NEVER been a fan of using bunker liners, but they were certainly warranted in this case.

Please check back here often for further updates as we work to resolve this issue.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY QUEEN VICTORIA!

Adding Sand to Bunkers - UPDATE

Now that the course has healed from aeration, we have finally been able to devote some time to adding new sand to our bunkers.  As per my blog post from a few weeks ago (http://qgolfclub.blogspot.ca/2012/04/bunker-sand.html), we will first be adding sand to the green-side bunkers as they are a bigger priority over the fairway bunkers.  Again, the budget allows for 80 total tonnes of new sand so if there is any left over after completing the green-side bunkers, we will then begin freshening up the fairway bunkers.  Here is a photo taken late yesterday morning of new bunker sand being distributed in the front right green-side bunker on #9:

distributing the new sand in the bunker

There is a common misunderstanding that our bunkers don't have enough sand in them.  This is certainly not the case.  Believe it or not, on average our bunkers have between 6"-12" of sand in them.  The problem is that the sand in our bunkers is old and contaminated and therefore it no longer possesses the physical characteristics and qualities that make up an "ideal" bunker sand.  The playability of it is poor at best.  This misconception is nothing new for older golf courses that are long overdue for a bunker renovation.

Guidelines for bunker sand depths are to aim for 4" of sand in the bellies of the bunkers and 2" along the bunker faces.  Any more than 2" of sand in the bunker faces increases the potential for a ball to "plug" upon impact and not roll down into the belly as it should.  We are constantly surveying the sand depths in our bunkers to ensure that they perform as expected.  Again though, how well or poor our bunkers play is strictly dependent on the quality of the sand in them at this time, not the quantity; I can not stress this point enough.

We hope to have all the green-side bunkers completed by the end of next week.  We started working on the front 9 yesterday and completed #9 and #8.  As the bunkers are being worked on, they are to be considered as Ground Under Repair.  Our Turf Care staff members have been advised to inform golfers of this temporary GUR and signs are being posted around the bunkers as they work in them.

Aeration Recovery Update

Man oh man, what an ugly spring this is turning out to be.  Unfortunately, it's starting to feel an awful lot like last spring, which was ugly at best.  Oh well though, no point in complaining about the weather in the lower mainland, that accomplishes nothing.

So, as far as aeration recovery goes, we are quite pleased with where we're at.  Despite the cool and wet weather, the greens are healing very nicely.  We dropped mowing heights down a bit today and will continue to step them down to our normal height-of-cut over the next couple weeks.  Here is how they look after today's mowing:

recovery on greens 1 week following aeration

The greens will remain a bit bumpy as they recover and in a large part due to the poa annua seedhead.  Yes, it's that time of year again for our poa annua to produce seedhead as it does twice per year, once in the spring and again in the fall.  This seedhead is quite prolific for about 2 weeks and then tends to become less and less apparent.  I wrote a blog last year post that explains in further detail about this seedhead production that can be found here: http://qgolfclub.blogspot.ca/2011/05/its-that-time-of-yearthe-dreaded-poa.html  We anticipate the greens to continue to recover well, especially if we get some warmer, drier and sunnier weather.

We pulled larger cores on the tees so they are not healing quite as quickly as the greens, but they are recovering well.  We are already seeing some new turf establishing on the tees as a result of the heavy overseeding we completed on them during aeration.  They should fill in nicely as the new grass plants establish and improve the overall density of the teeing surface.

The fairways are also recovering nicely from aeration.  It's been a bit of a struggle getting them as clean as we'd like following coring, but they are improving more and more with each mowing.  What we really need for them to improve even quicker is some consistently dry weather.  That being said, we are pleased with the progress on them and we will continue to work on cleaning them up as they recover.

The rough throughout the course is still very wet from all the rain we've been receiving so the cleanup process has been difficult to say the least.  We are doing everything we can to cleanup the smashed cores that were blown off the fairways.  This is a slow process and we ask for your patience as we continue to work at it.  Much like the situation on the fairways, consistently dry weather would help us out immensely!

As you can see below, the forecast is promising.  I've got my fingers crossed that it holds true!

It's nice to see temperatures heading in the right direction!