Rough, yes it is.

Well it is again that time of year to tune up your game and start to complain about the rough.  It is a universal truth that rough grass grows almost out of control at this time of year.  One of the challenges for us is the variety of grass in the rough, specifically Poa annua.  If you've played in the past week, or even had a drink on the back patio looking down on 18 it is a sea of patchy white looking grass.

All those white things are seed heads.  Similar to what we see on the greens, this grass is one of the few that will seed at our normal cutting heights.  It's the primary reason this grass is so tough to overcome is it's the ability to put out a tremendous amount of seed.  So much that it can overwhelm all our efforts to over-seed the rough.   In the fall we attempt to seed in desirable grasses, but at the same time we are opening the soil for new grass varieties we also make the soil available for all the Poa seeds to become planted as well.

In the case of this past fall, after we over-seeded the course the weather turned cool and wet.  These are perfect conditions for Poa annua, and since it was present as well as the tall fescue seeds, they thrived in conditions better suited for this obnoxious turf.  It germinates faster and establishes quicker, and the slow cool spring favored its development even more.

Products that attempt to take out Poa are available and we have them here, but imagine if we had damaged only 50% of the Poa, we would be playing on lots of bare ground.  Spring seeding is an iffy practice with the need to apply chemicals to prohibit crabgrass and goosegrass.  A timing conundrum,  over-seed and be overcome by weeds or wait and watch Poa take over. 

Sod is the best way to change out the turf, eliminate the competition and then treat the Poa when it is only a small percentage of the population.  An example of this change is behind the 14th green.

14th green  dark green is tall fescue

Tall fescue ringing the 3rd, look a the straight line short of the bunker and behind the green.

Some ask why don't we just cut the rough shorter.  Well Poa would still seed, just like the greens.  In addition we need to preserve as much root reserves for the desirable plants before summer stress begins.  All the other cool season grasses we have all want to be grown in the 2.5-3.5" range.  We mow regularly but during this period of cool, wet weather, the grass grows faster than we can keep up, especially as play and the golf calendar gets cranked up.  This flush of growth is not due to fertilizer applied this year but last falls applications to make the rough healthier.

There are many factors that go into the rough equation, but time and labor are the primary ones when the lush wet growth of spring begins.  Although we are busy with many aspects of a late arriving season, we are not neglecting mowing.  We are very aware of the conditions and putting as much manpower as possible into the operation.  It's a process we monitor very closely as golfers, neighbors and staff all have to occupy the same space for a limited number of hours and weather conditions.  Its a difficult puzzle to solve but we are working hard to make it one that everyone can enjoy.

Winter... Spring .... and Now?

Well since my last post the weather map has looked like a combination of a years worth of weather. All over the map so to speak.  Downright cool, then some sun, enough to bring the shorts out, then windy with now some tremendous rain.  Later this week it look like the thermometer might peak at 90.  Tough to  figure out which way we are going, which translated to the course makes decision making hard.

We recently aerified greens and didn't quite finish when it started the two day 5 inch rain event. We then tried to play catch up with all the wash outs and soft conditions.  Still on the schedule is finishing the last few greens, a few tees, then we will begin aerating the rough.  All these operations are 6-8 weeks behind schedule due to the weather, something we can only monitor and then plan to use the best days without impacting the golf calendar.  There are bound to be some conflicts but we will work hard to make them as minimal as possible.

One of the casualties of winter was the area at 5 tee.  We have been experimenting with some new varieties of Bermuda on several  high traffic tees and last year we tried a different hybrid in some rough areas at the surround of 4 green and 5 tee.  This compact area carries a lot of traffic and one of the most extreme microclimates we have on the course.  Both cool and warm season thrive in a very small area.

This walk up to 4 green was already combination of common bermuda, tall fescue, poa annua, and ryegrass.   The walkway from 5 back tee was the same combination and was a real mess in the narrow valley behind 4 green, which also serves as the main drainage for the area.

The hybrid bermuda we tried for this area can be seen as the brown river of grass.  Unfortunately the cold winter has killed most of the trial bermuda.  We will be replacing this along with some other turf in the area with tall fescue sod hopefully in the next week.  We began experimenting with a herbicide last year that has shown promise in eliminating bermuda.  So our goal will be to slowly return all this grass to tall fescue along with some ryegrass and hope to keep the bermuda at bay.  Not all of this work will be done at one time as we want to make the area as playable as possible, but we plan to turn this entire complex back to cool season turf.  We still are evaluating the bermuda for use on tees, but would like to reduce the amount of it in all the other playing areas.

Another bermuda experiment was on the back tee at 11, it will be aerified this week and re-seeded to ryegress and bentgrass for this season.  Sometimes we have to experiment to see what is possible, unfortunately for us it takes one to several seasons to see the results, but we are usually trying to solve a problem that requires us to think outside of the box.

As we are already making fall plans, you can see that we are very busy trying to finish mulching the various beds around the course, and we have a major landscaping undertaking at the tennis facility which will also take up some of our manpower.  It's a busy time for the maintenance staff with more projects than hours in the day, but we look forward to the challenges and are excited to out and about as everyone is to take advantage of the great spring weather as long as it lasts.