Summer turf diseases

If you been out to Legacy Ridge or many of the other courses in the area the last few weeks, you have likely noticed some disturbing symptoms of the irradic weather we have experienced lately.  While I can't speak for other courses, what you are likely seeing are a variety of turf diseases due to our higher than normal humidity, torrential rain, and heat.  Though they don't affect the overall playability of the course currently, they are definitely a big eyesore and theses areas will have to be repaired when disease pressure decreases.

We have suffered from a laundry list of turf diseases generally uncommon in this climate, Pythium Blight, Fusarium, and Brown Patch.  We made a curative application of fungicide to the harder hit areas of the course this week and should see improvement in the coming days.  Throughout the midwest and even back east, theses diseases are a constant threat and many courses employ preventative fungicide applications to prevent or limit the damage incurred.  In their climates it really isn't a question of whether, but when they will have to deal with theses problems.  While I was perusing the couple of the blogs we follow, I came upon a post by Mike Edgerton at Meadowbrook CC in Northville, Michigan.  He covered some of the diseases we have been hit with and if you are interested in a little more explanation of them click here. 

Employee BBQ

Today we are setting up for our annual employee BBQ.  We like to treat the crew to at least one day where we all punch out a little early and enjoy a cookout and social time here at the shop. 

The guys and gals from the Heritage GC take turns hosting and will be over as well this year for a little different fare than in years past.  Typically we cook burgers, dogs and brauts but this year we divided up cooking responsibilities and are serving some actual BBQ! 

Pulled pork, Pork Back ribs, and Brisket are on the menu today and it will be a welcome change from the usual.  A few of us here enjoy tinkering with smokers at home and volunteered our services (however valuable that may be) in preparing the food this year. 

It may seem like a small thing, but it really seems to lift spirits this time of year and hopefully shows our appreciation of the work our seasonal staff do each season.

Interseeding

This morning we verticut greens again in conjunction with a sand topdressing, only this time with a bit of a twist.  With conditions definitely favoring bentgrass at the moment, we took the opportunity to interseed T1 bentgrass while our Poa Annua is stressing a little more from the heat.  After Poa has gone to seed in late spring, it weakens and can quickly lose ground to the deeper-rooted bentgrass when maintained properly. 

We applied seed with drop spreaders before the topdressing went down at a rate of about 1/2#/1000 sq ft.  T1 is a variety we have had success interseeding with and on our nursery green.  It establishes pretty quickly and is a beautiful shade of green when compared to the Dominant Blend bentgrasses we began with 18 years ago.  It is aggressive laterally and has proven to fight off Poa Annua under our maintenance regimen on our Nursery Green.

Following the seed , we applied 24 tons of 80/20 USGA sand/peat mixture with our topdresser, drug it in with our cocoa mat and said a little prayer for seed germination.  The peat isn't normally incorporated in our topdresssing sand, but should hold a little more moisture than straight sand to help the seed stay moist longer.  We will give the seed a light watering each morning to help along germination.  There should be another slight increase in speed following our verticut, and with speeds already at 11' today, it is recommended to keep the ball below the hole whenever possible.

         

Finally feels like July

With all of the rain we received the previous week, the course is plenty green with the exception of some areas that held water in puddles through the daily rain events last week.  Most of these areas are now an unsightly shade of orange and will have to be addressed in the next few days. 

While the grass plant needs water to survive, too much of a good thing can be deadly, especially when heavy rain is followed by high temperatures.  Perfect conditions for Pythium and Melting Out, turf diseases that are fairly unusual in our semi-arid climate, but active under conditions we have experienced the last week and a half.  Humidity levels have dropped back down to more normal levels, so the threat of these diseases has slowed at the moment.  Hopefully it will remain that way.   

We will start with our remedies by aerating these areas with 1/4" solid-tines to open the soil up and allow oxygen into the profile.  "Venting" is a popular practice in wetter regions of the country where moisture is never lacking and temperatures reach the 100's.  Many courses employ this method on a biweekly basis to minimize summer decline on greens, tees, and fairways.  Hopefully it will prove successful in bringing back some of our water logged low areas on the course.  If need be we will reseed these areas and try to get them back in shape quickly.  Your patience is appreciated.   

    

So much rain in so little time

In the past week, we have received more rain than we typically average in an entire summer.  A little over 3" of rain has fallen, much of which came in a matter of minutes.  Obviously our soil can accept a small amount of this rain in such a short time, so the remaining water ends up puddling and running down the drain.  The storm on Friday afternoon produced very strong winds that spread branches all over the course and even down some very large branches and trees.  The weather station showed 1" falling in less than an hour "more like 10 minutes" and another .5" falling a couple hours later in less than an hour. 

All of this, the day before our City Championship.  The course sustained a great deal of damage to bunkers, with most of the sand washing down to the bottom of the traps.  Dave and the guys did the best they could to clean up debris and cutting up fallen branches when they wanted to be trimming the place out and focusing on fine details for the tournament.  We will continue to clean up the mess as we prepare to host two qualifiers for the Colorado Open on Thursday and Monday the 18th.  Sorry there aren't more pictures, most of the damage was too painful to post. 

 



Details

In less than a week, we will be hosting a couple of qualifiers for the Colorado Open.  We don't get the opportunity to showcase our facility too many times a year, so we take extra care when we do get the opportunity.  Many of the details we focus on will likely go unnoticed by most people, but give a finished look to the course we take such pride in. 

Things like edging drain basins, sprinklers, and yardage plaques often take a backseat to other more basic maintenance tasks, but with a full staff that is operating efficiently we can knock them out pretty quickly.
If the weather holds off, we should have things looking really good for Colorado Open hopefuls.

Nursery Update

 About a week ago we seeded the "1/4" Nursery" as we call it.  The prep consisted of killing off the native grass, mowing it down to 1" a couple directions and rototilling multiple directions incorporating our in house compost to amend the soil.  After about 4 days of light and frequent irrigation cycles and warm sunny days, much of the seed popped.  On the 4th of July we added a celebratory shot of 19-25-5 fertilizer to get things going.  We will continue irrigating only to keep the soil moist, save a couple days a week to allow for a tidy roll.  Hopefully by the end of the week it should be ready for another roll and then a mowing.  As the roots begin to take hold, we will topdress it by hand to continue smoothing the surface and slowly scale back the irrigation.  Our goal is to have it grown in by the end of the month, so we can harvest sod from it this fall.  We have a quite a few new tees to build in the next year, so the sooner we can begin, the better. 

As luck would have it, a few nights after we seeded, a sprinkler on the hill above the Nursery blew up and washed a nice portion of new seedlings out.  We will reseed this area, along with the rest of the nursery at a lighter rate to fill in the voids.  We erred a little on the light side with our seed rate, so lesson learned for next time when we have stripped sod off and have to start over.