While we've still got a couple of months until it's holiday season, to many golfers, this is the best time of the year to tee it up. The leaves are beginning to turn, the summer's oppressive heat and humidity are in the rear view mirror, and the greens are pretty darned slick.
If you haven't done so already, make spending some time on the golf course a priority this fall. Before you know it, the cold winter winds will come sweeping in!
It's been a little over three weeks since the short game area greens were seeded, and their appearance has changed dramatically. What started out looking pretty desolate and lacking in life, has now filled with seedlings.
We are mowing the greens on a daily basis, and will slowly be lowering the height as they continue to fill in. As we do with other greens during the summer, turning boards are being used to prevent damage to the Bentgrass area surrounding the greens, when the mower changes direction.
It often feels like we are doing battle with Mother Nature on the golf course. However at times like this, one can only have an appreciation for the beauty she allows us to present.
The new tees on #10 were sodded last month, and we've already started to aerify them. Why is this needed so soon?
Well, when you think about it, sod is similar to a skin graft. However, in this situation, we're not just moving it from one part of the body to another. No, the sod came from someone else's body--or in this case, farm--and is now being grown in very unfamiliar territory.
Aerification will help break through the layering that exists between the soil the sod was initially seeded into, and the soil where it will be spending the rest of its life. The first meeting between the sod and the aerifier was done using solid tines, so no cores were removed.
The tees are now well-rooted and being cut several times each week. The hollow tines will be making an appearance on the fine turf in the near future.
You might be wondering if all of this aerification is something you should consider for your own lawn if it was sodded. While aerification is a good idea for most every lawn, in the case of a home lawn, it's typically not necessary to aerify as frequently and aggressively as we do on the golf course. Your lawn likely leads a relatively easy life, with higher mowing heights and way less traffic than this turf will have to endure on the golf course.
So while we all enjoy the instant green that sod provides, it's going to take some time for it to acclimate to its new surroundings, and be ready for the wear and tear that the short game practice area and #10 tees will be receiving.
Now that all of the sod is down on the short game area, it was time to seed the greens. This process involves several steps:
While the team from Mottin Golf are awesome to work with, it is always satisfying when major construction projects are completed. The creation of a short game area, construction of new tees on #10, and bunker work on #11 were significant, and took a great deal of planning. The Club is fortunate to be working with one of the most sought after golf course architects, Andrew Green.
Now that seed and sod are down, one of the challenges is maintaining turf that is at different levels of establishment. That is, the needs of sod which was put down a month ago are not the same as a roll that was installed last week.
Until everything is well-rooted and we can allow conditions to firm up a bit, the mowing will all be done by hand, and we won't be able to drive a sprayer onto these areas. With any luck, in a month from now, we should be able to include most of this in our normal mowing routine.
Without a doubt, the installation of a tee to green cart path on #10 is a huge help at this time, as it allows us to keep cart traffic off the newly seeded and sodded areas.
It will be spring, 2022 when the short game area is ready for use--we are all excited to see the divots start flying at this new amenity!
As we've talked about in the past, the Annual Bluegrass Weevil is aptly named, due to the fact that it is primarily a pest of Poa annua. In the springtime, we consider this insect a good biological control in helping to prevent Poa encroachment in the tees and fairways. For the most part, the weevils take out the Poa, allowing the Bent to fill in.
But what's a weevil do when there's no more Poa? Well, while Poa may be like filet to these insects, and Bentgrass is ground beef, when their first choice is gone, they aren't going to pack their bags and leave. No, we are finding weevils--and their damage--in record numbers this year on Bentgrass.
What do we mean by record numbers? In sampling over the past couple of weeks, throughout most of the fairways, we have been finding fairly consistent counts of 100 weevils per square foot--that's over four million weevils per acre! As you can see below, the larvae are very small, but unfortunately there is power in numbers.
We have treated all of the fine turf areas of the golf course for the little guys, and have seen some positive results. When we start finding "Rice Krispies" coming to the surface, it means somebody isn't feeling well.
One of the tricky things when treating for weevils is that many control products need to be watered in. With all of the rain we have had lately, you might think we could just let Mother Nature do the watering in for us, but we need a fairly specific quantity of water, not a deluge. Therefore, even with soft conditions, we have had to run some sprinklers to get the plant protectants where they need to be.
A few cooler days (and nights) have been good for turf recovery, and will start to slow weevil activity. However, in planning for 2022, it will definitely be necessary to monitor Bentgrass more carefully and be prepared to play whack-a-weevil at a moment's notice.
September is here, and it feels like someone flipped the switch, sending us from oppressive 75 degree mornings, to much cooler temperatures in the upper 50s. For the turf, this is just what the doctor ordered to aid in recovery. Looking back at the month of August, in addition to the rollercoaster of "all or none" for rainfall, we ended the month with an average daily high temperature three degrees above normal.
So you might be thinking, yes, it was pretty warm in August, but does three degrees matter? Well, an argument can be made that when those three degrees are for an entire month, it does have an impact. In the short term, warmer temperatures over the month may lead us to include an additional application of fungicide for prevention of Pythium Blight on the golf course, which comes at a fair cost.
August is also the month of the year when cool season turfgrass has its shortest roots. Prolonged warmer temperatures may further delay turf recovery into the meteorological fall. More warm days also extend the window of opportunity for our insect nemesis, the Annual Bluegrass Weevil, to cause damage. Of late, for the first time this year, we are seeing weevil damage in Bentgrass.
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| Bentgrass thinned from weevil damage. |
Longer term, warmer temperatures allow weeds, such as Dallisgrass to become further established on the golf course. Dallisgrass is a warm season (think southern) perennial grass that looks like Crabgrass on steroids. This weed hadn't been seen on the golf course until a few years ago, and giving it more days to actively grow, isn't what we need.
Again, we are grateful to be in September, and fortunate that the remnants of Hurricane Ida led to nothing more than a soaking rain event for us. But don't discount the cumulative impact of temperature changes--the weeds, insects, and diseases aren't.
