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