Please pass the rain....

Our wonderful summer continues...

Please refer to an article written by John Paul Newport for the August 7th Wall Street Journal about the difficulty of maintaining golf courses during the hot summer of 2010. You can find the link in my "links" section on the right of the blog.

Our golf course is drying down after nineteen rainless days, with no rain in the forecast at least until early next week. Rough turf that are dormant haven't been irrigated due to either a lack of coverage from the irrigation system, or because we are not running rough heads to save water.

Fairways have three irrigation heads evenly distributed across their widths. In most cases, there is a single irrigation head in the center of the fairway, with the other two heads located in the rough. Even though two thirds of fairway irrigation heads are placed in the rough, the responsibility of all three heads working together is to irrigate fairway turf. Turfgrasses in the rough require more water than fairways, and providing adequate water to maintain thick and lush roughs would cause a myriad of problems for fairways, in that they would be overwatered. The problems include increased disease pressure, poor playability, inconsistency within individual fairways, and increased water requirements. To quickly summarize, the irrigation system irrigates fairways as designed, and provides a quantity of water to roughs, even though in a drought year like 2010, it isn't enough.

Dormant turfgrass in the rough will quickly recover after rains and cooler weather. (Mr. Stevens advised his eastern Golf Course Superintendent clients today that the second half of August will provide needed rainfall to aid rough recovery)

Green edges were overseeded as described previously on August 3rd. As there are four million bentgrass seeds in a pound, the seventy five pounds of seed we used represent 300 million potential new bentgrass plants. Unfortunately, asking a single bentgrass seed to germinate into an existing green is a most difficult proposition for many reasons we won't discuss here. If even 0.5% (half of 1%) of the seeds germinate, this would mean 1.5 million new bentgrass plants will be present into the perimeters of the greens....and success!!

We will continue to install seed into thin green edges beginning next week. This will be a more concentrated operation using small hand spikers, salt shakers to apply seed and a light application of sand. Since the germination rate is low, persistence will help to establish more plants. Small areas completely void of turf will be sodded in a few weeks.

Notes......We have treated all fine turf areas and some rough areas with an insecticide to prevent turfgrass damage from grubs. Areas with irrigation were watered in; we are worried about failures to areas without irrigation because this material needs to be placed into soil with irrigation or rainfall. We will keep you posted.....Greens and tees were treated with a fungicide to prevent diseases today. (Friday)....Minor outbreak of disease anthracnose is present on two greens this morning, we will continue to monitor and treat accordingly....Irrigation gallons now exceeds 12,500,000 for the season....Dry areas of fairways are being hand watered because my big hose will always be the most efficient method to apply water where it is needed most!!

On a personal note, son Benjamin and wife Laura are the proud parents of Violet Caterson Shields, born in Los Angeles on July 14th. Granddad Patrick can be seen many days sneaking peeks at pictures of Violet on his phone while he drives from green to green this summer....