Ice really is a great answer to Poa control on Putting Greens

but

Not good when your greens have lots of Poa

or

Not good when the ice is in place long enough to also injure your desirable bentgrass

 #2 Green Greywalls

 #2 Green Greywalls up close (green bentgrass toasted Poa)

Poa smoked on the Putting Green.  

Damage of the Year = ICE

 #3 Green Greywalls

 #4 Green Greywalls

 #5 Green Greywalls

 #12 Green Greywalls

 #14 Green Greywalls

 #16 Green Heritage

#13 Green Heritage

The most severe damage of the winter was caused by Ice.  The ice formed in these low areas and areas of surface runoff back in December.  The duration of cover lasted until this past weekend.  

Plugging out cores then getting down into the canopy where you can see the crown of the plant is much more promising than a visual look from the side.  Most of the crowns (growing point of the plant) still are green and many have little blades emerging.  It will take some time and warmer temperatures but the majority of these areas will recover.  

Almost every green has some degree of injury, but I feel we dodged a big bullet this spring because the damage could have been much worse!

Some fine examples of Snow-mold

 Pictured here is #5 Fairway GW, areas of high traffic always get more snow-mold over the winter months

 Dried up snow-mold mycelium on #16 green GW - let the heeling begin.  

 16 GW again

 What the turf looks like under that mycelium

 Our most severe snow-mold damage on the greens (2x3 area on #17 GW knob)

The snow-mold pressure was very high this winter but our fall fungicide applications worked very well.  The Heritage Greens were 100% clean and only #17 and #16 GW had some minor damage.  The Tees look perfect and the Fairways were anywhere from 50-90% clean.

Dave 'Nitro' Anderson completing some wonderful modification work on our walk-mower trailers.  He is making them much more user friendly and easier on the mowers.

Just another fine example of the benefit to our late season Milorganite application on the greens.  Here you can see the Milorganite prills suspended in the surface ice layer.  This created air chambers above the green surface all winter long and dramatically increases ice melt in the spring.

Photos from April 22nd 2013- Earth Day

Finally got Mike back on the Greywalls course today.  We dug out the Case and fired it up so he could clear out the snow around the shop area.  The snow around the shop was still about 7 feet and over the man-doors.  Mike will spend the week shaving off snow on our maintenance access point so it melts quicker.  We  hope we can get utility vehicles out on the course next week for clean-up in select areas.  

The rain yesterday, last night and today is a big plus for softening the snow pack.

 Well the snow is starting to melt a little, you can now see the top of the ball-washer posts and hole sign posts on Greywalls.

This is a drift of snow on the path from #16 Green to #17 Tee on Greywalls.  It must be 15 feet deep.