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.