Frustration and Renewal!

The roughs on some holes have really taken a beating the past month.  Seems like a long time since the lush wet days of the early summer.  This is a look into some of the issues and how we plan to address the problems.

 A lot of the rough areas are typical of this one on the 3rd hole, 5 to 6 types of grass in high traffic areas.  The wet weather set up the rough for issues, the first was shallow rooting due to excessive rain.  Next the hot weather that followed brought in 2-3 significant diseases that require treatments well outside our normal budget.  Add high traffic and the only grass surviving is bermuda.

We don't treat our rough grass for disease.  This would add another $40-50,000 dollars in chemicals, not including the labor and equipment.  Some of these diseases, like summer patch on bluegrass require treatment starting in April with monthly treatments until the end of the summer.  The best answer is for us to slowly convert to turf type tall fescue.  Seems simple enough, toss some seed and move forward.

Well this would be great if that's what happened.  The dead looking bluegrass will have some recovery, the poa annua has a 60 year seed bank and will come back out in the fall, and the bent grass and ryegrass, will most likely make a late fall-early spring return.  Most new construction in our area uses all tall fescue sod to overcome these issues.  Even then bluegrass is seeded into the sod when established and at times can become the dominant grass, which again is subject to all the pathogens a wet warm summer brings.

Our plan will be focused on improving the soil and conditions to make tall fescue more favorable.  First we will aerify and seed the worst areas starting next week.  The new irrigation system will allow us to spot water all the newly seeded areas to help in the establishment.  The earlier we can get a desirable grass established the better the odds against the other grasses when they try to re-establish themselves in the late fall.  Later this fall we will begin applying some herbicides that inhibit the other seeds from getting established.  Not 100% effective, but better than nothing.

This goal will be to work towards managing two types of grass in the rough, tall fescue and bermuda.  The fact is bermuda is the dominant grass in the the majority of the rough.  The good news is that it likes the summer, the bad is that in fall, winter and spring it makes a spotty and inconsistent rough grass.  There is no defense against bermuda without a wholesale change.  Transitioning bermuda grass out is an intense 2-4 year process with the majority of the time having very spotty rough.  New chemistries are making the process possible, but a lot of pain occurs before the results are seen.  As I noted in a previous article, we have seeded areas with tall fescue for over 8 years and still see only bermuda grass, it's that tough of an opponent.  Sodding is the only defense, and that still comes with a high price with monthly applications to suppress the bermuda in the soil.

We have witnessed areas that we completely renovated have bermuda runners 2 feet or more down in the soil.  Killing the top portion helps weaken the plant, but this is one tough grass to stop.  In some ways, we should encourage it's growth since it takes traffic, uses less water and requires no chemicals to keep it alive.  The big downside is the brown color and playability issues all winter and spring before it comes back to life for the summer.  There is a reason it was named rough, our goal is to make sure it's playable.