This short article will give you quite a bit of insight into what we have to deal with when irrigating with our water. For reference our water has a TDS of 1400 ppm. It is also very high in sulfur and has quite a bit of nitrogen as well. This ties our hands when trying to inject a material to buffer the high salts, as sulfuric acid will add more sulfur and N-pHuric acid will increase nitrogen too much. We are however, experimenting with spaying a synthetic acid directly onto the fairways.
http://www.files.asianturfgrass.com/201503_gcmchina_en.pdf
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Thursday, April 9, 2015
What would Augusta do?
Via Pace Turf
Fifteen years ago, Mark Herrmann, Sports Columnist for Newsday wrote the article "Battling the Augusta Syndrome" where he commented: "The syndrome also is measured, though, in headaches. It has ramped up the stress on superintendents and golf course budgets, especially now, when the golf economy is stretched thin." Well, the golf economy is even thinner now than it was 15 years ago so get out your bottle of aspirin because it is The Masters time of year again. The golf economy has little to do with the maintenance budget of a facility in the class of Augusta National Golf Club (ANGC). But, what would AGNC do if a 25% water use restriction was imposed prior to The Masters? Would they turn back water across the entire golf course resulting in a mosaic of green and stressed grass? Or, would they cut back by reducing overseeding some areas and letting the grass go dormant. My first guess is that Augusta would find a way to purchase water from some other region of the country and tell regulators to buzz off. However, if they really had to cutback on water use, I suspect that they would select keeping all of the grass that is irrigated, irrigated with sufficient water - not stressed. That would mean not overseeding large areas of the facility. If you want a 25% water reduction, turn off 25% of the heads. Augusta Country Club (ACC) provides an example of non-overseeded roughs and is located within a few hundred feet of AGNC. Of course, this is not a fair comparison, but that isn’t the point. How will the golf industry and golfers respond to a water crisis? Will golfers continue to demand Augusta wana-bees, or will they accept something more water-conservation oriented? In California and other drought stricken regions of the country and world, wall-to-wall winter overseeding is a luxury that is not going to be supported in the future. Not overseeding roughs will be the easiest way to rapidly meet water restriction needs if roughs were overseeded in the past. This sounds easy, but this strategy only works if the irrigation system is designed with part-circle heads on fairway perimeters. If your facility does not overseed roughs or your facility is located in an area where overseeding is not needed, for example coastal areas, figuring out how to meet a 25% reduction in irrigation volume is going to be more challenging. In those situations, turning off 25% of the irrigation heads is going to require additional thought and irrigation system design changes. With mandatory water restrictions looming for California golf courses, we can expect some discussion regarding golf course conditioning this summer. Will there be sufficient water to manage all California golf courses as they have been managed in the past? The answer is a simple no. Some, not all golf courses will have to turn back water on the areas of the course that least impact golf play. Courses that have access to well water or that are lucky enough to be using recycled water will see no impact from the new gubernatorial water restrictions. Courses that use domestic water blends with low-quality well water will impacted, but not as seriously as courses relying entirely on domestic or potable water. The primary impact of water restrictions will be on turfgrass aesthetics, not playability. We are all about to find out the real impact of aesthetics on the golf marketplace. Will golfers still play dry and brown courses that have had to reduce use of domestic water, or will they choose to play nearby lush green courses irrigated with recycled water or well water? I think we all know the answer, but only time will tell the true impact of golf course aesthetics on the market. Remember that Mark Herrman article mentioned at the start of this article lamenting the Augusta Syndrome? Well, Mark Herrmann also had a comment on the conservation-focused (possibly to a fault) 2015 US Open held at Pinehurst No.2. In his more recent Newsday, June 15, 2014 article, "It didn’t look or feel like a U.S. Open" Mark Herrmann expressed his concern for overly dry and less penal roughs when he wrote " Yes, we understand that the asparagus-dense rough got to be a cliche over the years. But the USGA went too far the other way." If the dry and firm conditions at Pinehurst No.2 for the Open doesn’t work and the conditioning for the Masters is too extreme, where is the middle ground? California golfers are going to participate in one of the largest golf course aesthetic experiments ever imagined. They will decide which courses succeed and which courses will fail.
Good luck everyone. This is going to be another interesting golfing season.
Fifteen years ago, Mark Herrmann, Sports Columnist for Newsday wrote the article "Battling the Augusta Syndrome" where he commented: "The syndrome also is measured, though, in headaches. It has ramped up the stress on superintendents and golf course budgets, especially now, when the golf economy is stretched thin." Well, the golf economy is even thinner now than it was 15 years ago so get out your bottle of aspirin because it is The Masters time of year again. The golf economy has little to do with the maintenance budget of a facility in the class of Augusta National Golf Club (ANGC). But, what would AGNC do if a 25% water use restriction was imposed prior to The Masters? Would they turn back water across the entire golf course resulting in a mosaic of green and stressed grass? Or, would they cut back by reducing overseeding some areas and letting the grass go dormant. My first guess is that Augusta would find a way to purchase water from some other region of the country and tell regulators to buzz off. However, if they really had to cutback on water use, I suspect that they would select keeping all of the grass that is irrigated, irrigated with sufficient water - not stressed. That would mean not overseeding large areas of the facility. If you want a 25% water reduction, turn off 25% of the heads. Augusta Country Club (ACC) provides an example of non-overseeded roughs and is located within a few hundred feet of AGNC. Of course, this is not a fair comparison, but that isn’t the point. How will the golf industry and golfers respond to a water crisis? Will golfers continue to demand Augusta wana-bees, or will they accept something more water-conservation oriented? In California and other drought stricken regions of the country and world, wall-to-wall winter overseeding is a luxury that is not going to be supported in the future. Not overseeding roughs will be the easiest way to rapidly meet water restriction needs if roughs were overseeded in the past. This sounds easy, but this strategy only works if the irrigation system is designed with part-circle heads on fairway perimeters. If your facility does not overseed roughs or your facility is located in an area where overseeding is not needed, for example coastal areas, figuring out how to meet a 25% reduction in irrigation volume is going to be more challenging. In those situations, turning off 25% of the irrigation heads is going to require additional thought and irrigation system design changes. With mandatory water restrictions looming for California golf courses, we can expect some discussion regarding golf course conditioning this summer. Will there be sufficient water to manage all California golf courses as they have been managed in the past? The answer is a simple no. Some, not all golf courses will have to turn back water on the areas of the course that least impact golf play. Courses that have access to well water or that are lucky enough to be using recycled water will see no impact from the new gubernatorial water restrictions. Courses that use domestic water blends with low-quality well water will impacted, but not as seriously as courses relying entirely on domestic or potable water. The primary impact of water restrictions will be on turfgrass aesthetics, not playability. We are all about to find out the real impact of aesthetics on the golf marketplace. Will golfers still play dry and brown courses that have had to reduce use of domestic water, or will they choose to play nearby lush green courses irrigated with recycled water or well water? I think we all know the answer, but only time will tell the true impact of golf course aesthetics on the market. Remember that Mark Herrman article mentioned at the start of this article lamenting the Augusta Syndrome? Well, Mark Herrmann also had a comment on the conservation-focused (possibly to a fault) 2015 US Open held at Pinehurst No.2. In his more recent Newsday, June 15, 2014 article, "It didn’t look or feel like a U.S. Open" Mark Herrmann expressed his concern for overly dry and less penal roughs when he wrote " Yes, we understand that the asparagus-dense rough got to be a cliche over the years. But the USGA went too far the other way." If the dry and firm conditions at Pinehurst No.2 for the Open doesn’t work and the conditioning for the Masters is too extreme, where is the middle ground? California golfers are going to participate in one of the largest golf course aesthetic experiments ever imagined. They will decide which courses succeed and which courses will fail.
Good luck everyone. This is going to be another interesting golfing season.
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