Sunday, April 4, 2010

fescue seeding

Late last fall I sprayed round up on many of the areas that are to be converted to fescue on the back nine.  The plan was to have these areas ready(dead) this spring so you could start seeding.  The plan worked very well and I am sure you may have noticed many of these areas on the back nine.  Last week, I started to seed these areas using a turfco overseeder.  This machine cuts silts into the ground, drops the seed in the silt and also using rollers closes the silt.  Ideally the seed in placed just below the turf in a nice soil trench to allow for good germination. I have completed all but one of the seeding areas on the back nine. This morning I have noticed a few of the seeds are starting to break the through the seed coat.  The benefit of this overseeder versus spearding the seed using a spreader is that we have much more accurate rate.  As I have said we are seeding at a very light rate right around 50 pounds of seed per acre.  The research shows that at this rate using the type of seed I have chosen should provide a thin stand of turf.  The "normal" seeding rate is around 100 pounds of seed per acre.  One problem that may result from the light seeding rate will be that the areas may take some time for complete coverage.  I have posted the "no carts in the native grass" signs in close proximity to the seeded areas please refrain from driving in the newly seeded areas and please do your best to inform your playing partners throughout your round. Fescue grass on the golf course is a lateral hazard and should be played that way even in the new seeding.  You have a choice of playing as it lies within the hazard or  dropping your ball from the last point that it crossed and incurring a penalty.  Additionally, the fescue grasses take some time to develop into what we all think they should look like.  The first season I do not believe we will see a beautiful seed head as in some of the older stands of fescue.  Most likely the newly seeded areas will look more like rough grass until they mature.

We have also started our spring herbicide program for the mature stands of fescue.  We are applying two products this spring one will kill all the undesirable grass and one will hopefully prevent undesirable grasses from germinating.  The windy conditions lately have not help  in making this application hopefully the upcoming week will be clam so that we can continue the application. We have around 70 acres of fescue on the golf course.  We spray 4 acres per tank load with a time per tank of 2 hours so that means we have a total of 35 hours to complete the application.  Lets hope for a clam week.      

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