4th of July week.

It is July 1, the course is green and we have a pond full of water. Life is good. The weather we've had in the last few weeks has allowed us to minimize our water usage and even these last few days of high heat have not overly dried the course out because the high humidity has kept the moisture from leaving the plant. Now, the high heat and humidity has increased the disease pressure, but we are staying ahead of the pressure with timely sprays and are in good shape.

If you saw the small slices in the greens today and wondered what they were from, the answer is a PlanetAir. This machine vertically slices the soil, allowing for greater air exchange and water infiltration. After we ran this over greens we put down a very light layer of topdressing. The idea here is that the sand will work its way through the slits and into the thatch layer to help dilute the organic matter. The thatch layer grows through the season as plant material dies off, so by lightly topdressing throughout the season we are trying to match the accumulation of organic matter with dry sand to avoid thatch accumulation. The slits also help to keep the turf canopy dry, which helps to reduce disease pressure, because disease loves moisture.

PlanetAir in action.

These are the knives that slice into the soil.

Slices in green

















You can hardly tell we were here- In fact the PlanetAir is heavy and acts like a roller, so the greens are actually faster and firmer after we do this.

We also swapped three catch basins that were very close to greens last week. Two of them were on 12 and one was on 13. Because of the heavy topdressing on fairways the catch basins are getting very low, so we are raising them up. When we raise them we are also putting in a more heavy duty catch basin that doesn't break as easily as the old, plastic ones. I really like doing these because they look drastically better right away.

Old catch basin- Low and broken

New catch basin- Level and looking good.

I hope everyone has a great 4th of July weekend!

Ian