Electric Equipment Initiative

Paul Carter, CGCS, Bear Trace at Harrison Bay, Harrison, TN:

"How great for the environment would it be to be able to maintain the golf course without burning a single drop of fuel? Well, that may seem like a dream but it is one that we are going to chase at Harrison Bay. In an effort to reduce our impact on the environment through the emission of carbon emitted by our current gasoline engines we are converting the majority of our golf course maintenance equipment to a fully electric battery powered fleet.

This Electric Equipment Initiative, as we like to call it, will involve the replacement of gasoline combustion engines on our greens, tees, approaches, bunker rakes, greens rollers, and our staff utility vehicles with fully, 100% electric equipment. It will be a total of 19 pieces of equipment which will allow us to maintain the golf course without polluting the air with carbon emissions and will allow us to not disturb our golfers and guests with the operation of loud equipment.

Working with the great people in the Office of Sustainable Practices in the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation we were able to obtain funding from Tennessee State Parks and the Tennessee Valley Authority for this project through the Clean Tennessee Energy grant. By converting our gasoline burning equipment to all electric equipment we estimate we will reduce our gasoline consumption by over 12,000 gallons, eliminate the emission of over 215,000 pounds of point source carbon, and reduce our maintenance expenses by over $30,000.00.

"These units will allow us on many days to maintain our golf course without burning a single drop of fuel or emitting a single pound of point source carbon emission..."

It has taken a while to get the project off the ground but we are getting very close to seeing it be a reality. The equipment we chose for the project is the Jacobsen Eclipse 322 triplex mower for greens, tees, and approaches, the Smithco Super Star 48 volt bunker rake, the Tru Turf R52 greens roller, the Toro Workman MDE, and the Club Car Carry All Turf II. These units will allow us on many days to maintain our golf course without burning a single drop of fuel or emitting a single pound of point source carbon emission. The goal of the whole project.

We have taken delivery of a couple pieces of equipment last week which have already been placed into service and are operating beyond our expectations."

Visit Paul's blog at bthbgcm.blogspot.com.

Step on up...

Craig DeJong, Hendersonville Country Club, Hendersonville, NC:

"Our staff has taken on an additional project this winter. The seven stairways throughout the course, leading to various greens and tees, are beginning to degrade quickly. They are also inconsistent in the material used to originally build them.

In a casual conversation recently, the idea came up to redo them all with stone. After some research, I decided that this was a task that our staff could manage. So far the project is going great and the comments from members has been very positive."

Visit Craig's blog at hccgcgd.blogspot.com

Mute Swans...

Rick Tegtmeier, CGCS, Des Moines Golf & Country Club, West Des Moines, IA:

"Our resident Mute Swans are going to have a new friend soon. I have located a female mute swan that is a couple of years old. She is from Wisconsin and her owner lives in Illinois. I will be getting her next week so she can become the companion to our lone male. So we should have 2 pairs of Mute Swans to start our spring season. Hopefully one of the pair will nest and produce some cygnets. Above right is a photo of one of our pairs.

We keep our swans at the maintenance center all winter in special pens built for them. They are fed lettuce and a special grain to keep them healthy and in good condition for the winter season. As soon as we have some open water we will move them out to their summer homes.

Mute Swans nest on large mounds that they build with waterside vegetation in shallow water on islands in the middle or at the very edge of a lake. They are monogamous and often reuse the same nest each year, restoring or rebuilding it as needed. Male and female swans share the care of the nest, and once the cygnets are fledged it is not uncommon to see whole families looking for food. They feed on a wide range of vegetation, both submerged aquatic plants which they reach with their long necks, and by grazing on land."

Visit Rick's blog at dmgcc.blogspot.com.

Here we go again?

Mark Kienert, CGCS, Bull's Eye Country Club, Wisconsin Rapids, WI:

"Curiosity got the best of me. I knew I would find ice once again on putting surfaces, but the question was "how much?" So I grabbed my snow shoes from my garage, bolted them on my feet and went for a walk. (I had forgotten how tiring walking in the snow could be so I managed a little exercise to boot.)

I figured I would find ice on the first green, but what kind of ice? Would I find solid clear ice, milky white ice (preferred) and at what thickness would I find it?

Snow depths over most open areas of the golf course average about 12" in depth.

Point confirmed, ice present! (But it is present like this every year.) I'm guess estimating that the ice layer formed the 10th of February when all day rains turned my driveways into a sheet of ice. (For some reason our onsite weather station did not record any rain for that day and needs to be checked.)

While the picture doesn't show real well, the depth of the ice is approximately 1 -1.25 inches thick. Touring other greens adjacent to the first reveled .25 inch of ice cover on #10 and ice to a depth of 1 inch in the drainage pattern on #8.

What are we going to do about it? Right now, nothing. The 10-25 day forecast is calling for seasonal temperatures. Nothing too warm. This might be a good thing. What we need is a nice slow melt. A fast quick thaw might trigger the plants to break dormancy and then the possibility of death occurs when temperatures fall back into the teens, which we know they will. The ice this winter formed late enough in the year that I'm not at all worried about ice suffocation. (60 days for Poa; 150 days for Bent.) Our snow melt in mid January found unfrozen soils and the water drained away leaving behind no harmful puddles. Also, aerification holes will allow for faster drainage and drying of putting surfaces when snow melt does happen.

What we have going for us this year is the benefit of a late season deep tine aerification coupled with a second solid tine aerification and a heavy topdressing to protect the plants...

What we have going for us this year is the benefit of a late season deep tine aerification coupled with a second solid tine aerification and a heavy topdressing to protect the plants. The aerifications will improve surface drainage and oxygen exchange. The topdressing will protect the crowns of the plants. Also I allowed the greens to "shag out" like the winter coat on horse to allow the plant additional leaf surface to maximize food production and storage. (Plant health.) Also, the extensive work regrassing putting greens that thinned out or succumbed to last years drought should pay dividends too. Your greens were as healthy heading into winter as I have seen them for some time.

With that said, today I will be looking into pricing out a snow blower that will fit on our tractor to help us remove snow and ice as quickly as possible, if needed, when the time comes."

Visit Mark's blog at bullseyegreensblog.blogspot.com.

A pretty good day...

Michael Stachowicz, Turf Specialist, National Park Service, Washington, DC:

"The day I got fired was not the the worst day in my life. In fact it was a pretty good day. Obviously the view gets rosier with time, but I can safely say that that day was not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. And I know that I am not the only one who has had that feeling.

Every day of my career I thought about the stability of my job. Statistics don't bear this out, but because we are such a close knit profession it feels like people losing their jobs is an epidemic. Because we are close knit and anyone one of us could get to a any other superintendent in the world well within the standard six degrees of separation (I would say two, max) we have all been touched by the injustices that have cost our peers their jobs. We all look on, not to be gossipers, but to make sense of what had happened and to try to take steps to avoid it ourselves.

Prior presidents had dealt with the loud 2% they way they should be: they were respectfully dismissed...

Pressure had been mounting at the club for two or three years when the then club president formed a second green committee in addition to the one I had been answering to for the prior six years. Prior presidents had dealt with the loud 2% they way they should be: they were respectfully dismissed. This president probably never thought what forming a second green committee (cleverly called the Golf Course Conditioning, Aesthetics, and Playability Committee) to give the complainers a voice would do to the club and to my career. I know he never thought something bad would happen because I am memorialized in the centennial history book's presidential message as a visionary for the direction of the club.

This is all to say that leadership matters, and while I won't go into it further right now, the reader can see what the author of this blog is being set up for. The greenkeeper, like it or not, becomes the face of whatever direction the club's officers choose. There is not enough communication humanly available to disassociate the greenkeeper from anything having to do with the golf course, regardless where the orders come from.

When I got the call that there was going to be a meeting with my boss and the president, I knew what was coming. As I left for the meeting my wife said to me 'Have fun getting fired!' parodying the line from the Princess Bride: 'Have fun storming the castle!'

It is the scary and wonderful end of an abusive relationship. Your paradigm changes, all of a sudden things that were clouded by the fog of war brought on by summer comes into focus as the fog clears...

As the news was delivered, I felt this great sense of relief. Anyone who has been in this business long enough knows someone who has expressed this same feeling at getting fired. It is the scary and wonderful end of an abusive relationship. Your paradigm changes, all of a sudden things that were clouded by the fog of war brought on by summer comes into focus as the fog clears. Health, family, future, opportunity all come to the forefront. The fucked up situation that you were trying to protect your staff and your family from is gone. Like that. Not your problem anymore. Finding another job seems like an easy task compared to the hornet's nest obstacle course with a moving finish line that you were attempting to conquer everyday at work.

I got home and started pacing. My wife handed me a scotch glass that never seemed to get empty (she is good like that). The pacing stopped, we sat on the couch and started to map out our future. And I realized the twenty years where I thought about job stability on a daily basis was wasted heartburn."

Visit Michael's blog at http://mstachowicz.wordpress.com.

Winter pruning...

Steve Cook, CGCS MG, Oakland Hills Country Club, Bloomfield Hills, MI:

"Oak Wilt is a vascular disease and it attacks all oaks. The disease plugs the water conducting (or sapwood) tissue, interrupting the flow of water, leading to wilting and sometimes death. Fungicides can be injected to protect the tree, but as with any chemical treatment, the results can be inconsistent.

An easy way to prevent Oak Wilt is to prune outside of the disease transmittal time frame. Sap feeding beetles can spread the fungus from tree to tree, so it is important to avoid open pruning wounds during the growing season when beetles are in flight. So winter pruning on oaks is preferred.

This week we begin our annual schedule of oak pruning on both courses. It takes about one week to complete those trees scheduled: 10 - 20% of the native oak inventory."

Visit Steve's blog at ohccturf.blogspot.com.

The Yearly Haircut...

John Slade, Laurel Creek Country Club, Mt. Laurel, NJ:

"One of the things the crew can count on each winter is the annual pruning of our wetlands crossings on #2, 8, 12, and 14. According to the conditions of our permit, we may only do this trimming during January and February, and only hand tools can be used.

So, no gas powered hedge clippers or chain saws for this work--the guys go old school with lopping shears and hedge shears to cut back the new growth over these four acres. By the time they're finished their forearms are like Popeye's."

Visit John's blog at laurelcreeksuper.blogspot.com.

Hey, who says nobody notices? Check out this nice note John received this past weekend (love the 'gulag workers' reference!):