Wow, almost 20,000 page views of my blog. I never thought when I started this 3 years ago that the blog would be referenced so many times. The main reason for writing updates was for the members of Hawks Landing to be informed not only about what we are doing on the golf course but the why. At first there was not a great following but now there are so many members that go to the blog weekly, which I feel very good about. The other benefit to the blog is that there are so many Superintendents now writing blogs, Communication back and forth either through twitter, email, and now google + is so easy . When you really look back even two years ago it was by phone calls and sometimes email that we were able to talk. Now, all I have to do is turn on my phone and everyone is right there. I will say it makes the tough days a little easier. Blogs were a scary thing to take on 3 years ago there were not many of us ' biting the bullet' and embracing this open communication approach with the members of the clubs. I would like to thank all of our members of Hawks Landing that reference this blog and all the golf course guys that I have had the chance to meet over the last 3 years it is a great tool that I really enjoy doing. Happy New Year
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Monday, December 26, 2011
Merry Christmas
I hope that everyone had a great Christmas.
Hard to believe the weather that we are having sun is out and another fairly warm day. Looking at the extended forecast it looks like we will have continued warm weather for another 10 days. At this point there is some frost in the ground but some areas there is only about one inch and we can still dig into the soil. This is interesting since I do not recall any time in the past there was hardly frost in late December.
This extended warm period has been ideal growing conditions for the poa trivials in fairways, which is not a good thing since this is our main 'weed' problem in the fairways. I have noticed a considerable increase in the poa trivials population. This upcoming spring I would like to look at converting 13 fairway back to creeping bentgrass by killing the fairway with roundup and then reseeding with a new improved type of creeping bentgraass. What I would like to do is make at least 3 test plots of 3 different varieties of creeping bentgrass and test these grasses over the course of the year to determine which is the best selection for our golf course. I would be looking at 007 http://www.sroseed.com/Products/PDF/007_ts.pdf , Declaration http://www.lebanonturf.com/products/items/5866863/index.aspx and Memorial, http://www.scottsproseed.com/download.php?obj_id=293&browser=true and maybe another plot using the combination of the 3. What we will be able to do with these plots is get some real on course data of the performance of these grasses. From this data we will be able to select the best one to use if we were to decide to convert any more fairways in the future. We have not made any commitments to doing this at this time but it is something that we should look at in the very near future since the poa trivials can not handle the summer months and tends to go dormant but when the cool weather returns this grass grows at a much faster rate then the creeping bentgrass. This is what leads to it's dominance in the cool weather as well as all the problems that we have in the summer with this grass.
Always something to look at for improvements to our course we are making great progress with all of our projects over the last 3 seasons.
I hope that everyone has a great new year.
Hard to believe the weather that we are having sun is out and another fairly warm day. Looking at the extended forecast it looks like we will have continued warm weather for another 10 days. At this point there is some frost in the ground but some areas there is only about one inch and we can still dig into the soil. This is interesting since I do not recall any time in the past there was hardly frost in late December.
This extended warm period has been ideal growing conditions for the poa trivials in fairways, which is not a good thing since this is our main 'weed' problem in the fairways. I have noticed a considerable increase in the poa trivials population. This upcoming spring I would like to look at converting 13 fairway back to creeping bentgrass by killing the fairway with roundup and then reseeding with a new improved type of creeping bentgraass. What I would like to do is make at least 3 test plots of 3 different varieties of creeping bentgrass and test these grasses over the course of the year to determine which is the best selection for our golf course. I would be looking at 007 http://www.sroseed.com/Products/PDF/007_ts.pdf , Declaration http://www.lebanonturf.com/products/items/5866863/index.aspx and Memorial, http://www.scottsproseed.com/download.php?obj_id=293&browser=true and maybe another plot using the combination of the 3. What we will be able to do with these plots is get some real on course data of the performance of these grasses. From this data we will be able to select the best one to use if we were to decide to convert any more fairways in the future. We have not made any commitments to doing this at this time but it is something that we should look at in the very near future since the poa trivials can not handle the summer months and tends to go dormant but when the cool weather returns this grass grows at a much faster rate then the creeping bentgrass. This is what leads to it's dominance in the cool weather as well as all the problems that we have in the summer with this grass.
Always something to look at for improvements to our course we are making great progress with all of our projects over the last 3 seasons.
I hope that everyone has a great new year.
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