{"id":655,"date":"2020-04-09T15:46:49","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T15:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/westhillsfredericton.ca\/golf\/?p=655"},"modified":"2023-06-06T12:01:44","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T15:01:44","slug":"april-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westhillsfredericton.ca\/golf\/blog\/2020\/04\/09\/april-update\/","title":{"rendered":"April Update"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hey Folks!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope everyone is healthy and keeping safe! This post will be a little bit lengthy, but with the current quarantine restrictions I thought maybe I could bring a bit of the golf course into your six foot bubble. I’m going to try and detail some of the events from the winter right up to the current situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The health of the greens in the spring time often depends on how the winter set up. If prolonged, ice coverage can cause damage to the turf by creating an anoxic<\/a> environment. Ice can create air tight layers that do not allow gas exchange. Similar to humans in an air tight room, eventually you would use up all the oxygen and be forced to breath the Carbon Dioxide you had expelled. Turf suffers the same fate, but reverse the CO2 and O2. This is a generalized explanation but for the sake of simplicity, ice coverage over three months is bad. The 2018\/19 winter conditions developed from a rain storm in December that partial melted the existing snow and then formed thick flats of ice in the low surfaces of most of the greens. The results were devastating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The spring to 2019 was pretty close to the worst conditions I have ever seen and I had thought such devastation was unlikely to be repeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By late fall 2019 I thought Mother Nature was going to repeat herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ice
Ice one the green, November 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A
Ice on 18 fairway, November 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Through rain and snow events we had about three inches of ice covering most of the golf course. We took some steps to reduce the coverage as much as possible. These included clearing the snow from the greens with the loader and then running a tow behind aerator to fracture the ice and create air pockets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n