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.