First cut on Bermudagrass

Over the last three days we have mowed the low-cut around greens, tees and fairways. Hopefully most of you have been on the course over the last four months and seen the tinting experiment we have tried on all the low-cut bermudagrass. We are really happy with the results and hopefully you are too. In a previous blog post I talked about the tinting process, here is a quick recap. The product does not harm or help the plant in anyway, but it does increase the soil temperature in the turf canopy by three to four degrees. By increasing the soil temperature it allows the bermuda to never fully go dormant and has allowed us to start mowing earlier than normal. On non overseeded years we would have mowed all the bermudagrass at about the same time as we have done this week, but there is a major difference in turf quality. We are also mowing at heights of cut that we normally do not mow at until around June. By tinting the bermudagrass we have encouraged early green-up and overall better playing conditions at a much earlier time than we are accustomed to.