Water management decisions might be the most important
agronomic choices we make as turfgrass managers. Too much or too little water in the soil can
have a detrimental effect on the playing surface. Soil moisture content influences the
playability of the course, the turfgrass disease susceptibility, the ability of
turf to germinate and grow, soil compaction, and has a major influence on the turfgrass
species that will thrive in a given environment. There is also a negative public perception that
golf courses waste water. So we must do
our part to defend our water usage. We
must be wise stewards with our water resource, and that is why we feel the
need to collect sound data and have thoughtful reasoning for each watering
decision we make.
Since water usage is so fundamental to our success, it is
imperative that we keep accurate records of water usage and moisture content
for each season. We use spreadsheets for
recording this data and creating irrigation water usage charts and greens
moisture charts. It is one thing to have
the numbers written in a spreadsheet, but it is way more useful to create charts
with the information. They help us
simplify it and make it much easier to read.
We recently upgraded our irrigation software to Toro
Lynx. This program has helped ease the
data collection process immensely. At
the end of each season we run water usage reports and export the data into a
spreadsheet which we use to create our usage charts. The water usage charts show us how much water
we used each month and where it was applied on the golf course. It is very interesting to see and compare the
water usage between seasons.
The charts can help make informed decisions and where we may
be able to reduce water use. For
example, if we decided to reduce our water usage by 10%, how would we do this? If we had no data on past seasons’ watering
we would have no place to start. Would
we want to water 10% less across all playing surfaces? This seems like it may be a little short
sighted and unrealistic. Since greens,
fairways and tees are our most important playing surfaces, could we maybe cut
the 10% in other areas? If we were to
cut 10% out of our total water usage and take it all out of the rough, what
would we be left with? From our 2013 chart
I see that 17% of our water used last season was in roughs, so if we take 10%
of that away we are going to water our roughs less than half as much as in the
past. This may or may not be acceptable. Since we have the numbers in front of us we
can more easily make informed decisions.
Water use is currently a very big
topic, and for good reason, so it is extremely important to have access to this
data in the event that water cutbacks were ever mandated.
We also track moisture on greens daily. Our greens are a patchwork of bentgrass and
poa annua. For poa to perform optimally
the moisture needs to be higher than for bentgrass to thrive. Balancing the two and finding the ideal
moisture, taking in to account the weather conditions and daily play can be a
tricky task. So to better aid in our
decision making process we use moisture meters. Through the use of meters we obtain a
quantifiable number which guides our watering decisions. Each day the cup changer also brings a soil
moisture meter and checks each green in nine locations and writes down the
average. This number is recorded and
tallied on a spreadsheet so that we can track moisture. We look at these numbers and have
conversations about moisture daily. How
are the greens performing and where is the sweet spot for them? Are we having to hand water a lot in the
afternoon? Is it so much that we are
affecting golf play? If the greens
started at a slightly higher moisture level in the morning would they make it
through the day with less hand watering?
Would this benefit them? These
are all questions we ask. At the end of
the season it can be very informative to look back and see the times when the
greens moisture was up or down and compare their play quality at the
same time. By recording the daily
numbers and creating graphs we can put the data in an easy to read format which
helps us make these decisions and also helps us defend those decisions
afterward.
As grounds managers, we take pride in our ability to read
the conditions and make decisions based on instinct and experience. That is important and it should not be
minimized, however intelligent water management is so crucial to our success,
we must make the most with the tools we have available to us. By creating water use charts we give
ourselves one more tool we can use to make smart watering decisions.
This chart makes it easy to see where on the course we are using
the most water and where we are using very little. We can also create this chart with gallons of
water used labels.
