Its Been Awhile

Well I have definitely been slacking on the turf care blog this month as some of my present and previous employees have reminded me. July has been a busy month at the Kananaskis Country Golf Course, as well as at every golf course in the country. The weather has been great this month with normal amounts of precipitation, and not one morning frost delay which is very rare at a mountain golf course. As of today I have not had to use any insect repellent on the course, and knock on wood, it will be the first time I have never used any during the season. Coming from Manitoba I know what mosquitoes are all about, so it is a nice change to have a limited amount of pests on the golf course. Speaking of pests I have noticed a few more elk on the golf course and they have been leaving their mark on the greens as well as in the bunkers. There has also been an increase in bear activity in the area, mainly grizzly bears. Numerous trails have been closed in the area to reduce the chance of the bears coming in close contact of the trail patrons. Calvin, Trent, and I spend a lot of time dealing with bears on the course, and after awhile the novelty wears off, so a good day is one not spent dealing with bears.

Bear 105 "Maggie" and her cubs

This month we completed a deep tine aeration with the help of Specialty Turf, and have been plugging away at smaller golf course improvement projects. We have been doing some selective tree removal and pruning to improve turf health in high traffic areas, as well I plan to get the GA 60 rolling next week to relieve some compaction in walk on areas. Fertility wise we are right where we want to be with all applications up to date and all playing surfaces looking great. We are still cutting our greens at a relatively higher height than most courses, but with our topdress and rolling program we are still achieving our desired speeds while still promoting a healthy stand of turf.

Overall I am quite pleased with how this season is going. We are pretty much at the half way point in the season with only 11 more weeks left for the course to be open for play. The turf care team has been great, consistently delivering an excellent product each day to ensure we meet or exceed player expectations. With a crew of 40 + there is always going to be changes, but for the most part we have maintained a very strong team core that is responsible for the great conditioning of the course today. Staff training is an ever continuing process as we like to have a versatile staff that doesn’t lose motivation by having to do the same thing day in and day out. It keeps our supervisory busy, but it definitely keeps the crew morale up, and the mid season slump at bay.

The Crew getting ready to end another great day



Luis and Adam in deep conversation on 6 Lorette

Finally I would like to congratulate Shane Buckley in being named the top student in his turfgrass program at Elmwood College, in Cupar Scotland. I had the opportunity to visit Elmwood College in 2008 during my trip to UK and the program is known internationally for producing great turfgrass managers. Shane is no different, he has been an important part of our team, providing leadership and performing many of our most important tasks. I have just received word that Shane will be heading back to the UK at the end of August to complete his level 3 certification. We are going to miss him, but we wish him all the best in continuing his education and know how much thought went into making his decision to head back to Elmwood.

Shane on 3 Kidd

Summer is Here

Well July 1st has come and gone, as well as the summer solstice. It’s hard to believe the days are already getting shorter and we are already ordering our new winter covers for this fall. The course is really starting to fill in, with all our snow mould spots virtually gone, and many of the elk urine dead spots starting to regenerate. Within the next two weeks our team will be starting aeration on areas with heavy compaction. These areas include tee and green walk-ons, and rough along cart paths. Our team is lucky in the fact that we have a continuous cart path system on both courses and that it is always cart path mandatory for golf carts everyday of the season. This definitely helps reduce compaction on the course caused by golf carts, but we still must relieve the compaction caused by foot traffic caused by over 300 players a day, per course.


It looks like we are going to have some great weather the next week, which will be a nice change. We have been lucky to escape most of the rain in June as well as the mosquitoes that accompany standing water. Being from Manitoba I am used to being eaten alive and being out here this season is a nice change. We played golf the other night and there was not one instance where a mosquito had broken my concentration. That being said I guess I didn’t have any excuses for playing so poorly and losing money to Calvin and Terry.

June Rolls On

This past week has been pretty routine for the K Country turf care team. We have been busy keeping on track with our cultural and fertility programs as well as picking away at a few course improvement projects. The HOC on greens was dropped this week to summer playing heights to ensure we meet our goal of having green speeds around 9.5 on the stimpmeter. Along with daily cutting we incorporate a vibratory roll to each course every other day, to ensure we have smooth putting surfaces. The past week we have had some Fusarium pop up on most of our putting surfaces and it got to the point where we needed to put down an application of Heritage to keep it from spreading.


The crew has been busy hiking and white water rafting this past week. Plans have been set for having a BBQ on Canada Day and paintballing the following Friday. We have a very social crew that has definitely taken advantage of the area as well as the local establishment Woody’s. It is pretty impressive to see the staff on time and lively, day in and day out with very little sleep. While I have to be in bed by 10 in order to function the next day. They definitely make me feel old, but keep me young at the same time as many of them have energetic personalities. There are days when I shake my head, but overall they leave me smiling after our end of day meeting.

Safe travels to our turf care team member Lida, who has left us to pursue her career in law back home in England. She was a great team member who will be missed by all, especially her great sense of humour.

Finally I would like to say good luck to the courses all across the prairies that are dealing with flood waters and their affects. I have heard stories of clubhouses having 3 to 4 feet of water in them, golf courses 75 percent underwater and greens having faults in them due to the ground below them starting to slough away. We have been very lucky at Kananaskis as we have had minimal rain and basically only half a day of disruption in mowing. The only issue we have had to deal with is an abundance of bears on the property. We have conservation officers and Karelian bear dogs on the golf course on a daily basis trying to push the bears off. The golf course is home to many elk calves which are a favourite prey for the grizzly bears in the area, which can lead to some interesting situations.




Karelian Bear Dogs



Clayton and Shane getting ready to fertilize the Upper Putter

June Photo Montage