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Superintendents’ concerns for turf health intensify with the approach of winter. Chief among those is protecting their greens. In northern locales, where many golf facilities close for the winter, some superintendents cover their greens with sand or straw. But others will use plastic or some similar material to provide, literally, an additional layer of protection against snow or ice damage.
Jeff Johnson, the superintendent at the Minikahda Club in Minneapolis, covers his greens with a product developed by GreenJacket in Genoa City, Wis. Essentially, it’s a sheet of plastic (the company refers to it as an impermeable cover) cut to fit each green. Johnson also utilizes WatchDog data loggers to track what was going on under the plastic.
“If we had an anomaly and turf died, I could maybe look back at those records,” Johnson says. “If we had a January or February thaw and the air temperature reached 50 or 60 degrees… What happened under that cover, there was no way of knowing.”
About a decade ago, GreenJacket introduced an additional component; a layer of foam one-eighth-of-an-inch thick to provide an additional layer of protection, an approach favored by some Canadian superintendents, for obvious reasons. The full GreenJacket system includes not only the covers and insulation, but the company also recommends using a series of sensors at each green site that measure soil temperature and CO2 levels. The system also includes ventilation tubes that allow fresh air to circulate over the greens if CO2 levels get too high, which happens about once a week in some parts of Canada.
Today, Johnson protects 19 of his 21 greens with a cover. Two of his practice greens are comprised of bentgrass and aren’t covered.
There are a number of artificial covers on the market, as well. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages and the turf conditions at a particular facility may dictate what is appropriate or practical.
