yesterday the back nine greens were verticut in two direction, mowed, and topdressed. today we made a good attempt to start on the front nine greens but had to stop because of the rain and lighting. I am very happy with the way the back nine greens turned out this morning after mowing them. It is amazing seeing the amount of grass we get from the verticutting process. This should encourage lateral growth since we are slicing the tillers of the plants. Next week we will be overseeding some of the poa trivails spots in the fairways with creeping bentgrasss. The timing is prefect for seeding right now and I would expect some pretty good results. I am using an improved type bentgrass called 'memorial' this grass is much more resistant to dollar spot. The following is a link that has a good description on this grass
http://www.scottsproseed.com/download.php?obj_id=293&browser=true
I was planning on starting to spike the fairways this week but today rains really puts us behind. I really would like to complete the verticutting and topdressing the front nine greens and then we will move on to spiking the fairways. The last 3 rains events were much needed but not very good timing. We will continue to push forward.
Last week I started to spray fescue on the back nine. I was concentrating on areas that still have undesirable grasses. In three weeks the plan would be to mow down the sprayed areas to further stress these grasses. In the upcoming weeks I will add some broadleaf herbicide to the application and work on spraying the front nine. between 5/6, the hill on 3/7 and along the creeks on 2/8 will be done first. Next year these areas should be just about pure fescue. Looking at the test plots on 12 and 15 that were sprayed with the growth regulator I am still encouraged by the thin stand of fescue. I feel that next spring all new seeded areas and some existing stands that are in play will be sprayed with this product. It seems we are getting growth control for the most part of the year so I would feel that this program should work and there will be a thinner stand and reduced height of the turf. Bottom line is that these areas should actually be playable if the results are the same as the test plots. pretty encouraging actually. This is exactly the reason we do these test plots before making jumping all in. There is a lot of science involved here and knowing the right information is very critial to making proper judgments.