Another good week behind us and from the looks of it at least another solid week ahead. The golf course has really been in fine shape. The change in weather plays a large part in that but I also feel that the topdressing and verticutting are starting to pay off. Yesterday, we started to aerate the approaches on 15 and 16 also a few weak areas in 15 fairway. I would think this will be the norm over the next few weeks in that we will try to aerate one or two a day until they are done.
This is a great time of the year to apply some fertilizer. I plan on fertilizing the golf course using a granular next week. There has been some interesting data about the late fall fertilizer application in that this may not be as beneficial as we have thought in the past. This year, I plan on not making that late fall application and favoring a good solid fertilizer applied to the fairways and roughs right now. This should help the turf build and strong root system and fill in some weaker areas
Hopefully in conjunction with some of our cultural practices being done we should in theory build a better plant. I think that is the key, we need to look into the future do the right thing now to better the chances of survival down the road. If we want to favor a firmer faster golf course we really need to verticut and get some holes into the ground. Poa trivials is a a problem but we also have compacted areas that nothing can go into. Having a firm golf course doesn't mean less maintenance it may actually mean more since the ground needs to have proper air and water exchange for the turf to survive the drier conditions. I think that is what everyone gets a little confused about. I just can not shut off the irrigation without proper preparation of the soil for the plant to have a chance of survival.