Course Conditions: Late Summer/Fall 2018
August 23, 2018 —
We have now entered the final 50 days of the 2018 golf season.
While the season has absolutely flown by, there have been a lot of successes to celebrate on our golf courses. They have held up wonderfully this year.
The name of the game during this season is maintain, maintain, maintain.
Daily work is in a steady mid-season groove. All mowing schedules are in a firm rhythm and we’ve coordinated the hours at our disposal to fully optimize all mowing patterns. It has been greatly beneficial.
Even our afternoon mowing crews on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday have been in a great rhythm in recent weeks.
All of this has lead to phenomenally consistent turf conditions.
The rain
This summer has been the summer of good rains. On average, our area sees 3.23 inches of rain in the month of July. For reference, last July, we had less than an inch for the entire month.
This July, the golf course had 5 days of rain with a total of 3.25. It’s crazy how close to the average it ended up being. Our average temp for July was 88 degrees.
This increased rainfall has caused the grasses throughout the property to grow like weeds. Including the weeds!
We’ve been weed eating bunkers and deck mowing around the fairways and tees. None of that has slowed down into August here. We are even spraying the bunkers to kill the grass and weeds in them along with prevent any future growth.
The greens
On the greens, they are rolling exceptionally well. They’ve rolled consistently at a 10.5 to 11 on the stimp.
During the second week of August, we were able to fit in a good verticut mow and topdress. Verticutting promotes a healthier stand of the turf allowing for better grass conditions which in turn, improves the roll of the golf ball.
We’ve continued spraying the greens with our applications that includes a growth regulator. This growth regulator will suppress the growth of the plant, allowing green speeds to stay relatively consistent throughout the day.
We’re currently cutting our greens at .100” and we’re setting the pins brand new everyday on our daily member golf course.
The fairways
Over the course of the past few weeks, we have sliced areas in our fairways with 3-4” blades at the same spacing from blade to blade, pulled behind a gator. We are using it on areas on our fairways that are sealed of from the surface and need moisture to penetrate.
Why?
We’re hoping that by slicing through the turf and soil, it will allow a place for water to go to limit our chances for hot spots or wilted turf.
We’ve recently been injecting a Wetting agent into our irrigation system. This helps the water penetrate the soil while holding within the soil profile better. This is extremely helpful during the warmer and windier days, because the moisture levels stay longer.
Over Labor Day, we’ll begin the process for our fairway fertilizing process and as the season comes to a close, we will start the process of aerifying all of the fairways throughout the property.
Get out and enjoy these golf courses over the final few weeks of the season.
Trust us, you won’t be disappointed.
