Friday, September 30, 2016

Aerification

We've received a few questions in the last few weeks about aerification timing, so I thought I'd give an update and a few links that explain our thinking when it comes to aerification. As far as an update to our aerification, we only have the back nine fairways left to finish and will be able to get those done at some point in October. This isn't ideal timing for us (we wanted to finish this week but were rained out) but it's also not the end of the world either. Below are a few links from the USGA that cover the reasons for and preferred timing of aerification.

Why do we always aerate when the greens are perfect?

Why do golf courses aerate so much?

Easing the pain of core aeration.

Core cultivation: Timing is everything.

I hope those links are helpful. As usual we are happy to answer any questions you may have so please, feel free to comment on this post, email or call us!

Ian

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Aerification update, weevil control and seeding short rough.

As most of you know by now, we aerified greens and tees the week after labor day. Ideally, we would have also completed fairway aerification but, we were unable to because it rained every day that week. The greens are healing in very nicely and should be back to normal shortly. We've mowed them a few times since aerifying and are starting to lower the height of cut back to what we normally maintain them at. The reason we raise the height of cut after aerifying is to keep the mowers from picking up too much sand, which damages the mowers.  We will try again to aerify fairways next Tuesday and Wednesday. Hopefully the weather co-operates and we can complete them because they badly need to be aerified.

Sept 15.



















Sept 20.




















Something we've been waiting to do is a late season application to control the annual bluegrass weevils that are in our fairways. With this application we want to reduce the number of adults overwintering on the course which will in turn reduce the adults we have reproducing in the spring. The weevils have been munching away on the bluegrass in the fairways for a few weeks now but, we've been keeping an eye on them to make sure it didn't get out of hand. The reason why we let them go is because they're killing annual bluegrass, which we're trying to reduce anyway. Spraying weevils doesn't require covering the entire fairway. A majority of weevils are in the first few feet off of the short rough, so we sprayed one lap around each fairway and were able to get a majority of the weevils without using much product at all. Hopefully, we'll see a reduced population next year.


Deceased weevils (the small white things).



















Finally, we started seeding into some areas on the course to re-establish stands of grass that suffered this summer. We began in the short rough, on bunker banks and in the rough around greens. Getting seed started right now in these thin areas will reduce weed invasion and improve the stand for next year, resulting in healthier grass and greater play-ability. We'll continue to do this all fall in order to rebuild our stands of turf.

Seeded short rough. Looks ugly, but it will be better for this.



















Ian

Monday, September 5, 2016

Moss and poa death.

In anticipation of aerifying greens this week, we started spraying the moss on greens in order to limit its spread across the putting surfaces. Moss has proven itself to be one of our bigger management problems. We had been beating it back slowly and consistently by spraying in the spring and fall over the past year but, once we had the two weeks of rain in early August it came back strong. The problem with trying to spray for moss during the summer is that the product we use can be hard on greens that are stressed from the heat. So the moss that survived the spring was able to thrive once it had the proper conditions earlier last month. In reaction to this, we started our moss control program a few weeks early this year. Doing this will give us more time to control the population before the end of the year and will limit the mechanical spread of moss during aerification. You'll notice that the moss on greens has turned brown and will stay that way as we continue our control efforts.

Of Moss and Men from USGA

As I've discussed earlier on this blog, we've been working to reduce the amount of annual bluegrass in the fairways this year. We've been pretty successful so far and actually received a bit of help from the rain. The fairway spots that laid wet for a few days after all the recent rain actually killed off all the annual bluegrass and left behind the bent. Now, these spots do look terrible, but if you look at what's left it is all bentgrass which, after we aerify, top-dress and seed into these areas, should fill in leave us with a nice stand of bent. It's not the ideal way to transition from annual bluegrass to bent but we'll make it work.

Thin spot with only bentgrass remaining.











This week is our aerification week. It looks like we should be able to get greens done and hopefully a few fairways. Ideally, we'd get all the greens and fairways done, but it looks like we'll be getting some rain at the end of the week which would keep us from finishing. If unable to finish aerifying fairways, we'll have to finish them whenever possible later in the fall. It's not ideal but we've done it before. I hope you all enjoy your labor day weekend and we'll see you when we re-open later this week.

Ian