July Blues

Well after a long extended period of wetness, now the heat and humidity of normal July are about to return.  We are battling a few issues, mostly related to the elements.  One I've mentioned before is disease  in the rough (every where actually).  Due to the mixed bag of grasses in the rough, at any time multiple diseases are attacking multiple grasses.  I mention this as the picture below shows the difference between a pure stand of tall fescue and the heinz 57 we have.

Above on the left is pure tall fescue, no disease;  same as below left which is new tall fescue sod around the fairway on 15

Whenever I talk about summer and poa annua it always comes down to roots.  High temperatures and saturated conditions mean this shallow rooted plant struggles to compete.  The wet conditions created a situation where the plant had no reason to drive roots deep, so they are even shallower than normal.  The exception seen below is where we have an aeration hole and sand.  That drier condition allowed the plant to put down a few more roots.  It can even be seen that they are very white and healthy.

 This past year we purchased a deep tine aerator that we use in the fairways.  This great picture of some fairway turf shows the effect of an aeration hole and rooting.  Although we have only been able to perform minimal aeration, the results are amazing when air can get into the ground.

Uuuuugh.

Well since my last post there has been another 2+ inches of rain, every day of July so far.  This will not be another pity us blog, but I do want to point out a few things that concern us, but also alert members to some issues that we have no control over.

First, the many issues of being too wet I mentioned in the past post, but here is an example of uncontrollable disease.  The picture below show how affected the rough is to this type of weather.  We do very limited spraying of the rough, but because of our heinz 57 mix, almost any grass can be attacked by any disease in this type of weather pattern.

We would have to spray on a 5-7 day schedule to stop this

 This large limb shown below is from the large Oak at the 7th tee.  This was not storm related, it just dropped one day.  I point this out to be careful when your out there.  The tree and the limb seemed healthy with no obvious signs of distress.  Many of our trees are aging and most were planted at the same time, so as we see some decline around the course, we anticipate others will follow.  Especially trees that see this much traffic around them are more susceptible.  Again this is just to warn you to where you park, or stand.

I mentioned in the last post about the puffy tees.  We performed a heavy verticutt last week to remove excess thatch and apply a sand topdressing.  You can see from this picture how much material we pulled out of the tees.  Again this is not a great time to do this, but the scallping was becoming an issue.  We hope to see these heal in the next few weeks.

Lastly a little information about our lower area below the range parking lot.  It has been mentioned several times that we should reduce the size of the lower area to make the spot more attractive when leaving the 4th tee.  This is a picture of the trucks that deliver sand and compost.  They not only need space to access the area, but also turn around and leave.  A real challenge given our small entrance and tight quarters.  I struggle to find another location that is accessible for these size trucks, which has become the standard for the companies suppling our materials.  We will continue to look for solutions, but you can see we need to plan for these essential supplies.

Rain Rain Go Away...

I remember this little rhyme from grade school and it has never been more appropriate than now.   This is a year of guessing what month are we in now.  April was one of the coldest on record, May the hottest and driest ever ( that 158 years of record keeping) and now June goes down as the wettest ever.   We are switching gears every day on what to do, where to mow and how not to damage what we have.

Just this past 10 days we have witnessed 6 inches of rain at our course.  With old soil greens that do not drain that means dealing with the issue of mowing.  Seems simple, but the weight of the mowers pushes into the turf and causes the mower to scalp the grass, resulting in critical damage to the plant.   Again it does not take much to hurt a tender grass grown at 0.115" tall, in a hot and now very humid environment.  So please be patient while we raise cutting heights, maybe roll some days instead of mow, all in the attempt to reduce damage so when the pattern changes we can return to normal conditions.

As many heard me at the town hall, the 4th green has already started it's slow decline that we witness yearly.  All the rain water from the surrounding homes, draining onto a flat, slow draining green built in a low area surrounded by trees and tall houses is a recipe for problems.

What happens first are the roots start to die back from excessive wet soil, then the water heats up during the day and slowly cooks the roots.  Soil temperatures last week reached over 95 degrees in the soil..  roots stop functioning at 80 degrees, so not hard to guess what happens at 95.

Next algae starts to fill in and suffocates the pore space, leading to the thinning of the grass.

The above is a shot of the roots as seen through our microscopes.  We look at the root hairs to see if there are any other issues, such as disease or nematodes that may be affecting the plant as well.  To give you perspective, the white round things are individual grains of topdressing sand.

We will begin a series of treatments to improve the health of the grass if the weather cooperates.  Then begin an over-seeding program of new bent grass varieties to see if we can get some growth back.  All of this is made more difficult during the hottest and most stressful part of the year, but doing nothing will only lead to more dieback and I hate waiting; doing nothing.  

In addition to the greens we also see this excessive heat and humidity leading to other issues.  You will notice some tees with a scalped look along the edges.  The first, fifth and 13th tee all exhibit the look you see below as well as a few others.   When the humidity raises to high levels, the bent grass becomes puffy causing the mowers to sink into the top and scalp the grass.  There are a multitude of reasons but all of them are related to the humidities effect on the turf.  We can attack this problem better in the fall, but will try a few ideas at some selected spots in the meantime.

The most disappointing effect of all this excess water is the damage to the 15th fairway.  Over the winter we hoped to improve the end of the landing area.  We widened the area, planted bent grass and had hoped to install new drainage.  Unfortunately the winter froze us out of completing this part of the work.  As you can see all the water sits in the new widened fairway area, which has drowned most of the bent grass.  Persistent shade, excessive water and damage from carts and mowers has rendered this area unplayable.

We are trying to install a quick fix, by doing some minimally invasive drainage then installing new sod.  Trying to do so without disruption to play in the height of season is the challenge we are working on now.  We will begin to play this area as GUR soon and hope to have it back ready to play as soon as the sod knits.  This winters work might have succeeded without the weather extremes of mother nature.  The shade issue will need to be addressed for the long run, but for now we are trying to get this back into a playable condition.