golf course update

What a change from warm and humid to cool and windy.  On the other hand this weather will lead to some nice recovery of the turf.  Over the last 2 weeks we have been core aerating some of these weak areas on the golf course.  I was crawling around looking at some of these areas this morning and noticed some nice germination in the holes.  these areas were seeded to 007 creeping bentgrass. Here is a link to some additional information.   http://www.sroseed.com/Products/PDF/007_ts.pdf    This is a newer type of creeping bentgrass that has good resistance to dollar spot and provides a dense turf.  I am also using 007 in all divots mixture on the golf course.

Today, We started to verticut the white and maroon tees.  You may have noticed some scalping on only the whites and maroon tees also these tees are puffy and quite thatchy.  I feel the best reason for this is that these tees just do not get the traffic as the blues and blacks.  We removed quite a bit of material and plan on verticutting the teees again in the next few weeks.  I will also start to core aerate the tees tomorrow.  We are using a 1/4 inch hollow tine that will remove about 3% of the total area of the tee.  This should in conjunction with the verticutting help firm the tees up substantially.

I will also core aerate the greens this month.  I will use this same tine for this process.  I will most likely complete a few greens each week starting the week of the 13th.  My goal would be to complete 3-6 along with the tees that week.  the week of the 20th I would complete the front nine along with the putting green and the following week compete the back nine.  I have not core aerifed the greens as a whole in 10 years only completing a hand full.  This year the greens reached a threshold of excess amount of organic matter and in turn could impact the greens performance next year if this is not addressed.  Using a 1/4 tine should not effect the playability of the green to a great extent.  I will apply an organic fertilizer to help with recovery but as in the tees only 3% of the surface effected. 

I have also completed the last herbicide application in the new fescue for the year.  We have mowed all the areas last week to help remove the undesirable grasses.  Finally you can see the a nice stand of turf, there is still a few troublesome grasses left behind but I am confident that we will have a pure stand of fescue by spring.  These areas are growing up and now there is a nice defining line from the rough to the new areas.



thank you, and I hope that you will be able to enjoy the great fall like weather.

Neil