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.