Chipping Green Update

Here is the chipping green one week after the herbicide spray.  Still playable and some grass still kicking.  We will apply the same mixture again next week.  Today we fertilized the area to encourage regrowth so we can knock that down with the next spray.  Bermuda is one tough grass, I will continue to post updated pics every week until we see everything controlled.

This shows the bermuda is still alive and kicking.  One reason we need so many applications.

The real story on Oakmont's trees and their removal

If you didn't see this on golf channel, it was a great story on how Oakmont changed it's course back to it's original intent, and why they changed in the first place a long time ago.

http://www.golfchannel.com/media/story-how-oakmont-turned-back-clock/

Chipping Green Trial

Next week we will begin some trial work at the east end (16 tee side) of the chipping green area.  As we move nearer to the renovation, we continue to explore methods we will use to remove the existing grass and the contamination of unwanted species (bermuda, poa annua).   Our plan is to spray the approach area with a combination of herbicides to kill the grass, wait two weeks, spray again, assess the damage then repeat applications until all unwanted turf is fully dead.

Once this rate and timing of applications has achieved the desired effect, we will strip the unwanted grass, till up and smooth the subsurface and re-sod the approach with bentgrass.  This process will mimic the methods we plan to use when we start the renovation project.  This will allow members to see the process and witness the effort required to eliminate years of contamination from undesirable grasses.  It also allows us to evaluate rates and products to better gage when we need to start this process before we begin work on new course.  It is imperative we have total eradication of all turfgrass to ensure the best success after the work is completed.

The chipping area will be open for use during this process except for the days we apply the products, to ensure no tracking of these products onto other playable surfaces.  We anticipate the total process to take 6-8 weeks.  The area will be back open for play once we determine the new sod has taken root and can withstand play.

I will be posting updates and more pictures as we progress with this project.

More Poa tales

Recently you may have noticed large splotches of brown in the fairways and some of the rough.  This grass is Poa Trivialis or roughstalk Bluegrass.  This weak low lying turfgrass is found in our weakest areas and invades usually in the cool fall period and over the winter.

When we had the unusually wet May and we were trying to mow grass whenever possible we used a plant growth regulator (PGR) to trim back the growth of fairways and rough.  The use in fairways is normal, but this year we tried using the PGR in the roughs.

Rough and fairway grass on 6

Fairway on 18

This grass is best suited to low wet and high traffic areas.  Normally we see this grass start to stress out when the weather gets hot.  In this case we used a generic substitute with the same active ingredient and strength, but the inerts were different.  What happened, we are not sure, but it did affect the poa trivialis universally across the course.  Interesting that both bent grass and poa annua were not affected.  We know in some cases the generics have adverse effects, but in trying to shave costs when using a product across more acerage than normal we seemed to have caused a problem that we don't know how to correct.  

Our hope is that it is discolored and will bounce back but as with most things in nature we are waiting to see what effects remain.