Club Championship

Over the next three days the club championship will be going on. The course is in perfect shape. The fairways have grown in perfectly as well as the low cut. The course will be playing firm and fast do to the fact that we have only received 1.6 inches of rain in the last month and have not had rain since May 5th. Best of luck to all players.  

Fans

The covers to the fans were taken off this past Friday, however we are not planning on turning them on just yet. When we shut the fans down in the fall and before we cover them we do the necessary maintenance to keep them working properly. We do the maintenance at the end of the season instead of the beginning of the season that way we do not have to worry about the necessary maintenance when we are the busiest. The smaller fans only need to be greased while the bigger fans need to be greased and have their belts tightened.

Turf addition to the right of 17 cartpath

Over the last two weeks we have been working on improving the right side of 17 cart path. As you know there were two hackberry trees to the right and a cool season grass called Fescue. The right side has also never had irrigation. The combination of the trees, grass and no irrigation resulted in poor playing conditions. To improve this area we added irrigation to the left of the cart path, took down the hackberry trees and sodded with a shade tolerant bermuda called Tifgrand.

Miniverde Cultural Practices

Bermuda greens require more cultural practices than a bentgrass green does. On a normal bermuda green, cultural practices would be done weekly to prevent thatch build-up and excess grain. Since our Miniverde green does not receive anywhere near the amount of foot traffic as a normal green would we do not do as many cultural practices as most courses do. Today I verticutted the green in numerous directions; this process removes excess thatch and helps reduce the grain that has accumulated over time. Below is a picture of the blade we use to verticut and also a picture of what the green looks like afterwards. If you look closely you will see slits in the green. We also aerified the green in one direction. We put down a few amendments which will help with the soil and we also fertilized the green. I'm hoping the green will be healed and back to normal in about three weeks.

First step in converting blue tees

Today we sprayed all blue tees that will be converted to Zorro Zoysia with roundup. This is the first step in the process to convert the tees. Over the next few weeks you will notice the blue tees looking worse and worse. Don't worry we did not forget to water them, it's the Roundup working to kill off the existing bermudagrass. Renovation of the tees will begin on June 3rd.

Bermudagrass Encroachment

Twice during the spring and twice during the fall we apply a herbicide that suppresses the bermudagrass that is encroaching into the bentgrass. Bentgrass is a cool season grass and likes cooler temperatures. Bermudagrass is a warm season grass and likes warmer temperatures. When the bermuda is actively growing it encroaches into the bentgrass because the bentgrass is most vulnerable during summer months. Over time bermuda will win the battle versus bentgrass and slowly encroach into the edges of the greens. We do what we can to slow down the process by applying a herbicide and also by monitoring them closer than we would during the cooler months. Below is a picture of one of our worst collars. 

Fertilizer and Preemergence Application

Over the last few days we have been applying our second application of fertilizer along with our second application of preemergence. The fertilizer company has the ability to add a preemergence to the fertilizer, so we choose to combine the two applications. This combination will give us season long fertilization along with season long summer weed control. The fertilizer is a combination of quick and slow release nitrogen. This will allow us to get some initial growth and also allow us to have growth over the next few months.

Root Growth

April is one of the best months if not the best month for bentgrass to grow new roots. Weather wise we had a good March and April, and May is off to a good start as well. This past week I took a core sample on the large putting green, our heaviest trafficked green, and was very pleased by how healthy and long the roots looked throughout most of the green. This is a very encouraging sign with summer right around the corner.

Sod Work

Today we improved some of the areas of the golf course by adding sod. We regraded and sodded left of 1 green, front of 9 green, front of 10 green, front of 13 green and a few other smaller spots. It will take about one month to grow in and allow us to get back down to the lower height of cut.