Chris T,
winter kill is usual due to one of two things in my experience. Either the ground is thawed (often just the top inch or so) but waterlogged with an ice sheet on top leading to stagnation or excessive nutrients in the root-zone during the winter. The first is avoided by braking the ice on a regular basis. The second by low feeding programmes hence low budget courses being less effect. I worked at several alpine courses that had severe winter weather and rarely had any problems
Jon
I just spent an afternoon with the superintendent (Norbert Lischka) of Colt's Falkenstein in Hamburg. I met him the first time 17-years ago, and he had been at the club for about a year. He explained his ideas about managing the greens (and fairways) then and he's been able to carry these ideas through with tremendous success.
The greens are 85-year old push-ups (a few are 50) and have no drain tile, and the club was contemplating rebuilding them because they weren't performing. Norbert offered them another path, and lucky for architecture aficionados, they went with it because he saved the greens from being altered. I have little belief they would have been rebuilt faithfully, not today and certainly not 17-years ago. You just have to look around at what has been done to the few German classics.
Norbert had the greens deep drilled (40 to 50cm) and patiently filled each individual hole with a large, coarse sand. A couple shaded greens he drilled 5 times. He stopped verticutting. He stopped aerifying. He slices and spikes. He never uses a steel mat or synthetic brushes on the greens to work in the topdressing (every couple weeks or so), opting instead for dense but soft coconut mats. All the common practices have been halted because the are
poa inducing agents; he puts a meager amount of Nitrogen on his greens a year, and he's been paintakingly converting the soft poa greens towards firm bent surfaces. There is no thatch. For that he thanks this program and a product called GreenSaver; he swears by it.
It had rained pretty heavily the night before and the greens were firm under foot.
I asked him about the need of agrostis to have ample nitrogen... myth he said. It's difficult to argue when the evidence is staring you in the face. His greens are healthy and the agrostis is taking over the poa. At most courses it's the other way around. The soil profile shows deep rooting, and the soil is devoid of compaction; it's like fresh European rye bread. It smells healthy too. I'll post pictures in a few days; in one of the photos you can clearly see where he stopped aerifying; about 12-years ago if I recall correctly.
He doesn't use chemicals on his greens. So my concern posted earlier was blasted out the window.
He has been actively reducing the amount of lumber on the course... allowing sunlight to get to greens and tees that were once shade stricken and paid the price for it. This has helped tremendously as there had been virtually zero tree management since the course opened.
Bruce Hepner was quoted years ago in
Golf Course News saying (paraphrasing), that a good superintendent could make topsoil greens perform well. I questioned this, especially with heavy traffic, modern maintenance equipment and smaller surfaces. Norbert proved Bruce 100% right.
Norbert's once poa fairways are agrostis too. They're lean, not puffy, wet and soft.
Norbert is a real gift to German golf. He is showing the way forward; how to maintain courses cost effectively, but it's a bit of an uphill battle. His program and saving Falkenstein's greens from being rebuilt; those are two valuable contributions. The first green chairman who decided on letting Norbert pursue this path has to be given a tip of the hat too. The club surely had the resources to rebuild the greens if they wanted to.