From a turf management perspective, June was a real stinker. While we finally received some much needed rain during the final few days of the month, through June 25, we had less than one inch of precipitation. This was on the heels of a very dry May, where we only received 40% of normal rainfall.
In the first half of June, there were a number of storms that appeared to be heading right for us as they crossed the Delaware River, but somehow fell apart. A couple of examples of this are shown below--these two events provided a combined total 0.05" of rain:
In addition to the exceptionally dry conditions, June was just plain hot, with an average daytime temperature six degrees above normal for the month. To look at this another way, if 15 days of June were at the average temperature, then the other 15 were 12 degrees above average.
When you combine the heat and lack of rainfall, it obviously creates major challenges on the golf course. A quick look at the driving range floor (or most people's lawn) shows that any area which is unirrigated is the color of straw:
However, unlike your lawn, the fairways are maintained at a height of 0.375", have significant mounding, and dozens and dozens of carts on them each day, all of which adds to the challenge. In order to address this, we reallocated our labor to hand watering, devoting an unprecedented number of hours to this task for the month.
As we enter July, the recent storms have helped to rehydrate the turf.. Hopefully the next two months will be a bit less extreme than the past two were.
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