Courses with shade and grass

[Mando]

I'm interested in knowing which DG courses have been able to establish grass in shaded areas and how they pulled it off. Looks like Idlewild is one and wonder if it requires annual seeding or special soil preparation.

[Cgkdisc]

The Highbridge courses all have grass growing on the wooded fairways. The owner had a landscape specialist do soil evaluations and come up with the best seed mix when the site was originally going to be a ball golf course.

[optidiscic]

Seth Burton in west VA its all about mature trees and eliminating underbrush....pre existing parkland helps

[harr0140]

Turf on disc golf courses is tough to maintain, it is even tougher in the shade.

I would suggest to parks departments that do not want to be dealing with the envirormental impacts of erosion and compaction to plan for annual aeration of the fairways and green and tee areas. I would also suggest constant overseeding of those areas and possibly even slitseeding (for better seed establishment). It wouldn't truthfully be all that costly because the main areas would be where all the traffic gets consolidated, but most fairways people are spread out so the turf does ok, but aeration would still be beneficial.

The key to it all is proper turf species selection . . . and if it isnt done from the beginning you can still continue to incorporate the appropriate species into the existing turf.

The issues with shade is if there is compaction (traffic), shade loving turf is less tolerant of traffic but there are varieties of grass that will do better than others so that is the key issue here!

[cmcolomb]

Danny and friends at Bud Hill have some really nice grass growing in their fairways... not a lot of light gets to them and there is actually a good deal of water runoff so it is suprising to me to see beautiful green grass there. My best guess is a a very resilient seed...

[Mando]

Thanks for the replies. This will be on a private course with little traffic. Well drained loamy soil with a considerable amount of accumulated leaf matter that has built up over the years. Cool climate with plenty of rain. I'm raking and burning the leaves prior to seeding creeping red fescue, starting on the holes with the most sunlight. Adding lime to raise the PH which is low.
Much more shade than Highbridge, so I'm not sure if it will work or not...

[harr0140]

Danny and friends at Bud Hill have some really nice grass growing in their fairways... not a lot of light gets to them and there is actually a good deal of water runoff so it is suprising to me to see beautiful green grass there. My best guess is a a very resilient seed...

I played Bud Hill last winter in January and he had overseeded with ryegrass. It does its job to cover the dormant turf as well as any shaded areas where the summer turf is wore out. That is a fairly expensive venture to overseed all those areas and the equipment to do it may or may not be na issue elsewhere.

[harr0140]

Thanks for the replies. This will be on a private course with little traffic. Well drained loamy soil with a considerable amount of accumulated leaf matter that has built up over the years. Cool climate with plenty of rain. I'm raking and burning the leaves prior to seeding creeping red fescue, starting on the holes with the most sunlight. Adding lime to raise the PH which is low.
Much more shade than Highbridge, so I'm not sure if it will work or not...

If you want the most tolerant shade turf look into Poa Supina (for the densest shady conditions) although I pay about $25 per pound, but I mix it in with a general shade mix and hope the variety of turf species allows the most tolerant and dominant turf to win in each area. But for the extremely dense shade areas I would also simply recommend mulch as a ground cover. You can always make more mulch and cover up those areas to avoid runoff and compaction, but on areas where mulch might wash away seeding would be the better option.

[Mando]

If you want the most tolerant shade turf look into Poa Supina (for the densest shady conditions) although I pay about $25 per pound, but I mix it in with a general shade mix and hope the variety of turf species allows the most tolerant and dominant turf to win in each area. But for the extremely dense shade areas I would also simply recommend mulch as a ground cover. You can always make more mulch and cover up those areas to avoid runoff and compaction, but on areas where mulch might wash away seeding would be the better option.
The Poa Supina is out of my price range... paying $70 for a 50 lb bag of creeping red was bad enough. Put a heavy layer of mulch down on one hole and a funny thing happened, wall to wall mushrooms popped up the next year.