Trouble on the greens

By the start of next week, I'm sure many will be wondering what happened to the greens at 4 and 5.  Basically they failed under the heat of the July 4th weekend.  Why this happened has multiple causal agents.  Not all understood but this goes back not only to this season, but many years before when these greens were built.

The trouble this year is related to several factors, some direct, some unknown, but all play a part in the health of the plant.  This was the year that Poa annua seeded, no matter what the method to prevent it, it happened.  A long warm winter with rainfall, created a condition that was hard to judge when seedlings would arrive.

The products we use to inhibit seed heads on the greens all require timing to what is happening in the plant.  The timing is more art than science and different areas and greens types seed at different times than others.  Why is this important, well the plant uses a tremendous amount of energy to produce a seed.  This energy expends carbohydrates stored in the roots to push the seed out.  This energy stored is what we count on for the plant to use to promote rooting going into the summer.  Thus a lot of seed heads makes for  a weaker plant to start the year.  Coupled with the intensive amount of maintenance to smooth out the greens, the plant basically arrives at summer with short roots and no energy reserves.

Earlier this year we were beset by a disease called bacterial wilt.  This specific pathogen only affects poa annua on the greens.  There are no preventative or curative products for this pathogen.  The cure is to promote good health in the plant, which is usually counter to the ability to achieve greens speeds that membership requires.  The effect of this disease was to weaken plants and reduce rooting even further.  The worst outbreaks were on the 4th, 5th, 6th, 16th and 17th greens.

Practices were put into place to promote better health and things were turing around.  The 4th and 5th green were still struggling ( more on this latter).  The extended wet weather lead to shallow rooting.  If the plant does not have to reach for water and oxygen is depleted ( as in a water saturated soil),  roots move up in the profile.  Couple this shallow rooting with several very hot dry days and the  plant goes from drowning to wilting quickly.  Of course all of this also happened on the weekend of the Club Championship, when we are trying to get the best greens condition possible.

Pictured below was the start of the problem of bacterial wilt back in early June on the 4th green.

Below is what was observed this morning July 7th.

The course of action now will be to coax both these greens back to health, which is always tricky in the heat of summer.  Some plugging, some seeding , some fertilizing and a lot of gentle practices will be the  order of the day for the next few weeks.


Now how do these issues all relate?  Well the most problematic greens on the course are both the 4th and 5th greens.  The 4th green contains a lot of silt, which happened when the last rebuild occurred many years ago.  This causes the green to hold excessive moisture.  We have added a fan, as well as installing drain lines to help improve the surface, but this still only helps in certain cases.  The excess moisture in the green reduces rooting, and causes the soil to become anaerobic ( low oxygen) during much of the year.  Aeration and sanding along with all the other tactics only help so much.  We really require a dry year and some luck to get this green to perform well.

The 5th green has had many struggles over the years.  It too was rebuilt many years ago and I believe the poa annua grass in this green is a weaker species than the others.  The green was originally seeded to bent and was taken over by poa annua from the rough.  It's adaptation to greens poa annua has not been good and the struggle continues.

Both greens have been tested extensively for physical and chemical makeup with no major deficiencies noted.  Our next step will be to test for any long term herbicide residual that may be present just to determine if old treatments may be inhibiting rooting in these greens.  We will continue to solve the issues present, but many times, environment wins and we do our best to work around what nature throws our way.  The heart of this is the grass itself.  In no cases have we seen bentgrass affected, only poa annua, which for us is the majority of the grass on the greens with the exception of the 8th green.