Hot weather and disease control.

The heat and humidity that we've been dealing with for the past few weeks has meant that we have very high disease pressure to deal with. Turf diseases need three things; host, environment and a pathogen present. We always have the host and the pathogens present, disease pathogens lay inactive in the soil or thatch waiting for optimal conditions to grow. What we try to control (usually in vain, because it's mother nature) is the environment. The biggest thing we do (there are other things like topdressing and aerification) is limit the amount of water we put on the course because diseases need moisture to thrive, so we do our best to eliminate it. However, when it is as hot and humid as it's been recently, it is difficult to eliminate moisture. While we haven't received a lot of rain, what we have had is very heavy dew in the morning that doesn't burn off until around noon most days. This is a long time for the plant to be wet, allowing pathogens plenty of opportunity to grow. When we mow or drag we eliminate the dew and shorten the time that the plant is wet. However, with the exception of greens, we don't mow everyday, so we're not always removing dew. This is where fungicides come in to play.

In addition to reducing disease pressure as much as we can, we also have some very nice fungicides that help us control all of the diseases that we deal with throughout the year. We stay on a regular spray schedule to keep the course disease free and it really is paying off. Preventive spraying is not only far more effective, it is also far less expensive because spray rates are lower for preventive applications. So far, we've stayed pretty clean on the greens, tees and fairways but, if you look in the rough you'll see some untreated spots where dollar spot is thriving. 

Extremely impressive dollar spot mycelium. Imagine if we didn't treat the course at all! 

Soon enough this disease pressure will back off. In the mean time we'll continue doing our best to keep the course clean.

Ian

Hot weather and poa control.

The last few days have been hot and humid and it looks like after the weekend cool down we'll be back to more of the same. While this weather is miserable to work in, it actually doesn't require us to water too much. We haven't run the irrigation overnight since Sunday and we are catching up in some of the areas where we've dried out the last few weeks. The wetting agent we've sprayed is helping a lot and we have two new guys (both named Mike and both with a lot of experience on golf courses) that have been doing a great job hand watering hot spots. Hand watering may sound pretty simple, but it's nice to have experienced guys doing it because grass turns brown for a lot of reasons, and if the guy watering doesn't know why it's chlorotic he may actually do more harm than good. One example is if grass is yellow or brown because it has disease (anthracnose is a disease that can like wilt) you do not want to water it because you'll just make the problem worse.

Another reason why some grass brown is because of the growth regulator we sprayed on fairways to reduce the amount of annual bluegrass (poa) in our fairways. The damage done to the poa won't kill it, simply stunt the growth to the point where the bentgrass can out compete it. As the poa adjusts the the growth regulator it will return to its normal color but not its normal growth habits. The bentgrass is already growing over the top of the poa because of this stunted growth; it's pretty exciting to see and will result in much better fairways.

Chlorotic poa as a result of paclobutrazol application.

Bentgrass (the lighter green, healthy grass) winning.

Ian

Dry weather, functional wells and a new nursery.

These last few weeks have been pretty dry and it looks like this has lead to great playing conditions for the course. We have been doing our best to keep the course as dry as possible while also keeping it green with some new approaches this year. First, instead of watering a little bit every night we are watering at one hundred percent and then taking a night or two off. This seems to be cutting down on the wet areas in the rough we were dealing with last year when we went through dry spells. Secondly, we've been using wetting agents more this year. We sprayed greens a few weeks ago and have seen great results; they're holding up to the heat a lot better and don't require as much water to get them to bounce back if they do wilt. We've also been using a new moisture meter that tells us exactly how much moisture is in the ground at that time. Where this is really effective is when the grass is green and not wilting yet but, may be close. If we check the areas that normally wilt and the moisture is starting to get into the low range (in our case around 20%) we will hand water but, if it's higher than that we can let it go. This allows us to keep things drier and more consistent.

Moisture meter.

The wells at the range have been fixed and running for a few weeks. The water is being pumped into the new pond left of number nine and when it goes into the overflow it dumps into the irrigation pond. We are actually getting a lot more water than we anticipated, which was a pleasant surprise. What's interesting is how the color of the water changed once we turned the wells on. I'm not sure if you've noticed but the water is a really light bluish green. Whatever color it is, I'm just glad to have the wells working to keep our irrigation pond full.

In working on all the golf course projects the last few years we used up all the sod at our nursery and it was time to start again. A few weeks ago we cleaned it up, added sand and seeded it. Some of the seed is starting to pop and it should be a fuzzy green area in a week or two. This seed won't be ready to be used as sod for a while but, it will be nice to again have a nursery from which we can pull sod when necessary. We currently have green height sod available there so, this new area will be kept at fairway height.

Seedlings coming in.

Happy 4th of July!

Ian