A heavy subject

Weather is often part of these blog posts, as its impact on the Grounds Department's operation can't be overstated.  If you are hoping for something different this week, you may be disappointed...

August has delivered rain--a lot of rain.  Through August 30 we received 7.80" of rain at the golf course.  Most of us understand that an inch of rain is a pretty good storm, but if you dig deeper into the math, the numbers can be staggering.

The irrigation pond is at capacity.

An acre inch of rain is 27,154 gallons.  So if we multiply 27,154 by the 7.80" of rain in August, you find that every acre of the golf course was hit with 211,801 gallons of water.  With a gallon of water weighing 8.34 pounds, that is 1,766,422 pounds of water per acre during the month.  #9 fairway alone had close to eight million pounds of water land on it!

Divots

We've discussed divots in the past, however it may be worth a quick refresher--especially given this month's weather.  In general, we recommend that if your divot stays together, replace it, do not use divot mix.  

As you can see below,  a replaced divot provides a much better surface than a filled divot.    

Credit to Scott Bordner of Union League for conducting this trial.

No doubt there is variability of divot survival rate based on several factors.  For example, a divot taken from the top of a fairway mound may have a more challenging time healing as opposed to one taken 20' away in a fairway swale.  Available moisture is obviously impactful in determining if a divot will recover or not.  This is where timing can come into play.  

While Laurel Creek's Creeping Bentgrass fairways may not love August weather, with 7.5" of rain from August 1-August 23, there has been no lack of moisture.  A divot replaced this month definitely stands a good chance of recovering!

Farming Time

While turf growers could always be considered farmers by a strict definition, it is during mid-August that we truly feel like it.  This is the one time each year that we core aerify the fairways, often during intense heat, drenched in sweat and eating a lot of dust.

Golfers look at the number of holes we make (about 43 per square foot on fairways) and believe we tilled the whole surface.  In reality, most traditional crop farmers would shake their heads at what little we are able to do.  They may till their fields multiple times per year between harvests and plantings, whereas we only disturb around 8% of the surface area--then have thousands of carts pack this surface back down.

As usual, the Pro Shop staff joined us, to help with the cleanup process.  The guys did a great job, and the assistance is greatly appreciated!

Why more water?

After 11 straight months of below average precipitation, we had a nice bounce back in July, with 5.40" of rain.  The timing of these storms worked out well, as we only had one no cart day for the month.  Now on to August...

In the first five days of this month we received 84% of the monthly average with 4.35" of rain.  So why would we have guys out hand watering fairways right after so much rain?  There are a few reasons for this.

As a reminder, turf roots are at their shortest during August, thus the surface area from which the plants can pull moisture from the soil is significantly less than at other times of the year.  What this means is that we can't let the turf get as dry and firm as in the spring and fall.

Second, the fairway mounds didn't receive the full benefit of all of that rain, since a good bit runs off into the swales.  These mounds will also dry down much more quickly than surrounding areas due to full exposure to the Sun and wind.

Lastly, we are embarking on our annual fairway aerification this week.  We need healthy turf going into this process.  If the soil is dry, the turf will become stressed and wilt, extending the recovery period significantly.