Thursday, August 16, 2012

We went most of the summer without any rain and in the month of August I have not even turned on the irrigation system,  we have had to hand water some areas but have not run a full nightly program.  Before today rain the ground was still quite dry and we are by no means out of the drought but this morning .9 inches should help our situation.  I did see a story on the news last night that 65% of the US population is in a some sort of drought and that it is so bad in some parts that has lead to a large sell off of cattle,  the lowest head of cattle in many years.  And to make matters even worse they estimate we will be paying $670 dollars more per year for food items.

On the golf course side of things.   The mild weather sure does feel great but the heavy dews in the morning and  high humidity has been a prefect storm for dollar spot disease.  Normally I see this type of disease pressure in September not right now.  This year really has been playing a lot of tricks on us and trying to plan and budget has been quite a challenge with the extremes in the weather that is for sure.

Last week our staff did a great job preparing the golf course for the Club Championship.  The course was still a little damp from the rain earlier in the week but everything was in very good shape.  For our staff size it always amazes me what we can accomplish in week everyone works together as a great team here.  We continue to build a foundation of team member's that keep returning every year they know their job and really have a lot of pride in the golf club.

In the next few weeks we are going to be really ramping up the cultural practices on the course.  We will start by core aerating the tees and collars around the greens and when completed move on to core aerating the approaches.  We will only do a few a day and continue until finished.  Next week, we will also topdress the greens and approaches fairly heavy.  We have been applying light amount of sand throughout the summer due to the temperature extremes.  The turf is growing at a very high rate which in turn means there is a lot of organic matter being developed,  we really need to stay on top of this or we will have to core aerate the greens to remove the organic matter,  I surely do not want to core the greens and I am sure you feel the same way.  Right now we are doing OK but for the next few weeks, I am sure you will notice that there will be  a little more sand on the greens then earlier in the summer.  We will also spike the fairways along with verticutting them over the next few weeks.  We will verticut the fairways fairly aggressively  to also remove some of the excess organic matter from this summer this should help firm up the fairways,  We will also core aerating some of the hard pan areas in the fairways.   There is a few areas around the tees that have not been converted to fescue and remains kentucky bluegrass left unmowed.  this fall we will be spraying round up in these areas and reseeding them to fescue.



I will keep you in touch with any additional projects that we have planned for this fall in the next few weeks.


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