Current Conditions--3/7/14

As of today, we still have some snow cover from Mondays storm. A majority of our snow cover is in the shaded areas of the golf course and there are still some spots out in the open and on greens. 

We are hoping for some rain tonight that will help finish melting the last of the snow. We are hoping to be open for play this weekend. If all goes well weather wise, we should be aerifying the fairways starting Monday through Tuesday. 

Aerification.......or maybe not!

Well, we have our scheduled dates to aerify the golf course. Our first scheduled date is March 10th-11th for fairways. With winter storm Titan due to hit the area tonight into tomorrow, chances for keeping those dates do not look very promising at the moment. 6-10" of snow is forecast to dump in the South Jersey area. 

This is not really a shocker. For the most part, unlike the past two years, the area typically gets one last significant snow storm. This is the risk we run with scheduling aerification so early in March. We will hope for the best and take what Mother Nature gives us. 

From this point on till our growing season ends in December, we will stay flexible with our agronomic decisions regarding the weather and how it affects the golf course. 

June......so far

     The month of June, 16 days in the books, has been extremely wet.  We are currently at 6.58" of rain and we still have 14 days left in the month.  Rain is beneficial for the golf course but only in moderation.  In our world on the golf course, we don't have many happy mediums it seems.  We are always fighting to stay perfectly balanced.

     We had a successful member guest tournament for June 7th and 8th despite the fact that 2.5" of rain fell during the Friday into Saturday morning.  We did our best to provide the membership and guests with the best playing conditions that we could possible provide given the conditions.  We did however stress the putting greens out just a little to far trying to provide a quicker and smoother putting surface.  For the week leading up to the tournament we had basically mowed the greens 5 times in 2 days and lowered heights from .125" to .115"(1/8" to about 7/64"). This may not seem like a big difference but when you are cutting bentgrass and poa annua this low to begin with it becomes stressful on the plant to keep going lower.  With the fact of lowering mowing heights and increasing the frequency of mowing, we had stressed the turf enough to where we had active disease on the greens called anthracnose during and now after the tournament.  You may not notice the disease but it is there and if it is left untreated it has the potential to be damaging.  However, with our fertilizer applications and some fungicide it is now in check and slowly going away.  One benefit of the disease is it primarily attacks the poa annua which is an undesirable grass in our greens.  The areas that were affected are now filling in nicely with bentgrass which we like.

Area of anthracnose on the 12th green a week ago

      Also we anticipated the possibility of having a big rain event for the member guest weekend and kept the greens as dry as possible not only to have firm playing conditions but to have the ability to accept as much water as possible for when we did receive the rain.  In addition to watching future weather patterns and keeping the greens dry, we have been applying a new wetting agent called Revolution to the greens.  This product will ensure that the moisture we do have from rain or applied by the irrigation system will uniformly distribute itself throughout the entire soil profile and the soils that use to repel water will now have an ability to retain it now.  These soils that repel water is very similar to having wax on your car, the water beads up and rolls off, the same happens in the soil.  In short we have the ability to have a greater holding capacity in the soil profile now.  On the Friday of the member guest tournament we had received an inch of rain in the matter of 1 hour and the greens were still playable without standing water.  This is a win/win for the turf and the play-ability of the golf course for the membership/guests.

     We appreciate the understanding and following of the cart path only rules that seem to have been in place every day for this month.  The cart path only rules will help ensure that we can provide everyone the best playing conditions possible throughout the season.  We hope that this weather pattern changes soon and we can go back to 90 degree rule for the carts for your golfing pleasure.

Results of Aerification

This past Spring we aerified the putting greens very aggressively. We had several reasons why we chose to do this

Our timing of aerification was much sooner then we would have liked to go this season, however, golfing events in April and the availability of the aerifiers that we had rented dictated the timing. If you recall we had skipped an aerification in the Fall of 2012 because of the complements that we had received on how good the quality of the playing surface was and with all the play we were receiving we wanted to give the best conditions possible before play had slowed down for the winter months.

However by skipping that aerification that meant we were behind with our cultural practices and needed to play catch up. That's why we chose to have bigger holes on a tighter spacing.  That guaranteed us decent removal of organic matter and to be able to make many holes for roots to drive down into the soil profile and to be the healthiest that they could be.  

Today while changing cups on the greens I came across this as we were putting the plug back into the old cupping location. 

#1 green - 5.5" roots broken off when the plug was removed

This shows you the benefits of what and why we did what we did with regards to aerification. Aerification on the playing surfaces throughout the golf course for us is very much like a marathon runner. You just don't wake up one morning and decide you a going to go run 26.2 miles, let alone break any records doing so.  A marathon runner trains, and train and trains to be able to make that distance run.  The same applies for us with regards to making the turfgrass on our playing surfaces the best they can be.  We are essentially training the turfgrass when we aerify. We are providing the roots of the turfgrass the ability to grow, have increases oxygen, soil pore space and ready to make their own "marathon run" through the summer months.  The longer the roots the better the plants can handle the stresses that we will put them through with low mowing heights, hot temperatures, increased foot traffic, and ball marks.

  Seeing roots such as this in the picture puts a smile on our face. This is the fruits of our labor that no one else but us has the opportunity to see on a regular basis. These roots are the foundation to our product. Without them, we do not have a great putting surface. 

Green Surround Irrigation Upgrade

We are in the process of adding irrigation heads to our green surrounds throughout the golf course. Most of our green surrounds do not have seperate irrigation heads that will only water the rough areas or green surrounds around the greens in addition to having irrigation heads that are intended irrigate only the greens.  This is important because the amount of water required for bentgrass/poa annua greens is different from that of bluegrass/ryegrass roughs are.  

Most newer irrigation systems on golf courses have what we call "in's and out's" for irrigation heads around the putting green complexes. The "in's" are to primarily water the putting surface where as the "out's" only water the green surrounds. We have now added "out's" that will only water the green surround rough in a 180 to 240 degree angles away from the putting surface. This will allow us to better micro manage the amount of water that each area is receiving when it is needed. 

Our old way of watering the green surround areas was very "primitive" so to say and not the most efficient way to water but it worked as best as it could.  The way we had to water was to manually use a quick coupler key with an impact sprinkler head on the top. With only four of these available to use at one time it would take us a considerable amount of time to effectively water the green surrounds. With the new heads being installed we have more up to date technology that will provide better water distribution to the green surrounds which will in turn allow us to provide much better turf quality around the greens. We will also have the ability to water more green surrounds at one time. 

The new irrigation heads we are installing will not be connected to the automatic irrigation system like the rest of our irrigation heads are at this time. We will have the ability to pull electric wires to these heads at a later time so they can be connected into the automated system.  But for the time being this is a step in the right direction to provide better playing conditions and turf quality. As we install these new irrigation heads around the greens, please be patient and bear with us as we have the ground disturbed and are working very close to the putting surface. We are trying our best to minimize the impacts of our work to the membership and the guests.

Below are some pictures of the old and new irrigation as referenced above.

Adding the new irrigation head to the existing piping

Install almost complete

Green surround irrigation installed and watering on #1 green

Old quick coupler with impact head used for watering the green surrounds

GenNext Complete A&B 4th application

We have made our 4th and final trial application of the GenNext Complete A&B to the two acres of putting greens this past Thursday April 9th.  We are currently at 1.05# N/m applied to the "GenNext sprayed" greens and to the "non GenNext" greens that were given a liquid 7-0-0 ammonium sulfate.  At this point in time and in the past couple of weeks we have noticed any difference in color between the greens.  Growth has been the same also.  We had originally seen some differences with new growth in the silvery thread moss spots we have on some of our greens but looking at the areas today they all seem to be the same in and outside of the check plot areas.  On April 29th we had sent out a tissue sample to Tournament Turf Laboratories as part of our greens testing program.  We were not able to get a sample out prior to making the GenNext applications to the greens but we did compare two greens that had three applications made and two greens with the 7-0-0 ammonium sulfate applied.  Greens 2 and 6 had the GenNext Complete A&B and greens 11 and 13 had the 7-0-0.  At the time of the tissue sampling .925# N/m had been applied to all of the greens.  Here are the results from the tissue samples.

Key Findings: Tissue Analysis Results/Greens:  2, 6, 11, & 13

MAJOR NUTRIENTS:

NITROGEN, N:                     SLIGHTLY LOW (2, 6, 11, 13)

PHOSPHORUS, P                 ADEQUATE (6, 13), SLIGHTLY LOW (2, 11)

POTASSIUM, K:                   SLIGHTLY LOW (6), LOW (2, 11, 13)

MACRONUTRIENTS:

CALCIUM, Ca:                      ADEQUATE (2, 11, 13), SLIGHTLY LOW (6)

MAGNESIUM, Mg:              ADEQUATE (2, 11, 14), SLIGHTLY LOW (6)

SULFUR, S                            ADEQUATE (2, 6, 11, 13)

MICRONUTRIENTS:

BORON, B:                            SLIGHTLY LOW (2, 11, 13), LOW (6)

COPPER, Cu:                         ADEQUATE (2, 6, 11, 13)

ZINC, Zn:                               ADEQUATE (2, 6, 11, 13)

MANGANESE, Mn:              ADEQUATE (2, 6, 11, 13)

IRON, Fe:                              ADEQUATE (2, 11, 13), SLIGHTLY LOW (6)

SODIUM, Na:                        ACCEPTABLE LOW LEVEL (2, 6, 11, 13)

Moss areas on 2 green

3 Green--Small box area is the check plot area

3 Green--Small box area is the check plot area

7 Green looking at the check plot area to the right of the picture

7 Green up-close on the check plot area from center of picture to the right, bentgrass looks the same in  and out of check plot area

GenNext Observations Week 5

We are 5 weeks since our initial application of the GenNext Complete A&B. Since the last update we haven't noticed any more progressions. What we have noticed is that the "GenNext sprayed" greens had less poa seed heads on them. In the last week or so we have had a big emergence of poa seed heads on those greens. We had initially applied the seed head suppression application of Embark at 35 oz./A. We decided since we had the emergence of some seed heads and that the greens have been slow to heal from aerification with the weather and the growth regulator we would forgo the second Embark application

The "GenNext sprayed" greens have a great look with color and growth compared to the check plot areas and the "non GenNext sprayed" greens. The overall color is not as green as what we had seen for the first four weeks but they are still a bit greener than the "non GenNext sprayed" greens which are at the same with fertility. Aerification holes are a little more closed up on the "GenNext sprayed" areas compared to "non "GenNext sprayed" areas at this point in time. We will be applying our third application this Wednesday at the 8 oz./m rate.

6th green with GenNext Complete A&B applied

Check plot area on the 6th green