Another Timely Rain

This summer has been quite the contrast to last. We received another 3.1 inches of rain at the golf course between Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning. The rain Sunday night was quite strong and caused a lot of run off on the golf course. This had an undesired effect on our bunkers which were the worst I've seen in quite some time. However, it was quite advantageous to have completed our aerification the week prior allowing deep penetration for the water into our soil profiles throughout the golf course corridor. We are still in the midst of cleaning up, especially bunkers. We should have this completed midday or early afternoon. The rain has also brought a lot of fire ant mounds up to the surface which will be treating later this week.

Summer Stress is Definitely here for Greens

Some of our usual suspect greens as I like to call them are certainly starting to show some signs of summer stress. Greens that have poor air circulation or some that have sod from last year are showing signs of stress. We have mitigated the stress levels as best we can through this summer with blowing air through the drain tiles and precision watering practices. However even the utmost care is no match for mother nature. I do feel that the damage is very limited and the greens in total are the best they have ever been at this time of year. We will over the coming weeks begin to plug out the bad spots prior to our fall aerification. I anticipate full coverage through the fall and a great winter with the greens. You will also be able to see tree work and clearing being completed around some of these greens as in years past.

Aerification complete!

Our scheduled aerification of fairways, tee tops, and approaches could not have gone better. We finished pulling cores yesterday around noon. We have cleaned up everything through number 11 completely and have started our fertilization application to the front nine fairways. Due to our turf care teams hard work yesterday the entire golf course is open at the start of play on Tuesday morning. We even had enough time to get back around onto some of the entrance areas and wear traffic areas that we are hoping to get to later in the week but should have that completed by this morning.

Some other of the projects that we got completed yesterday included verti cutting of fairways and approaches prior to mowing. Top dressing greens. We are out putting the stones back in the tee boxes, fertilizing fairways, fertilizing greens and back to our normal schedule.

Verticutting on Tees

We have completed another verticutting on the tees last week and they are healing wonderfully.  It was a very aggressive verticutting however it will pay off dividends in the long run, just as it has in the fairways.  We gave them an application of fertilizer this past Monday to help push recovery.