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.