Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Current State of the Greens

I haven't created a post on here in quite some time.  Primarily because I have been so consumed with the course this summer.  I don't know a P.C. term to describe our greens condition right now, but it's definitely not "immaculate".  We have endured a lot of different weather patterns this season; Early spring, Late frost, 90+ degrees for 2/3 of May, Heat that hasn't stopped all summer, Record breaking heat wave, Drought conditions, One of the wettest July's in a long time, massive amounts of rain fall in a short period of time.  All of these conditions turned into my worst nightmare. 
We were doing great through June into the first of July.  I recall checking root depths on the 5th of July and having a solid 4" of root mass.  Remember the 11 day stretch of 100-113 degree days.  We were good through that period, sure we had a few stress areas but we were okay.  Remember the massive amounts of rain that we got right behind the heat wave.  I think it was about 5" over a week.  Well, the 5" of rain was our downfall.  I was checking root depths shortly after the rains and we had about 1.5" of root mass.  It is a misnomer that greens only look bad when they are in need of water.  When they receive too much water they go through a process called "wet wilt".  You may remember they turned yellow and then thinned out, that was the wet wilt in process.  The plants essentially drowned.  Once the yellowing presented itself I immediately aerified the greens to get some oxygen in the soil.  Turned out, too little too late.  We had better weather patterns for the next 2 weeks.  This weekend we got hammered with 2.5" of rain.  I had our greens aerified again Monday.  But I fear it's, too little too late again. 
Hopefully, most of the damaged areas we will be able to "push" really hard with fertilizer to get them to fill back in.  There are some areas that we will have to reseed; #4, #8, #12, PG.  This will be a long process of regaining turf.  I am doing everything that I can to keep you playing on the correct playing surface.  I am hoping that the greens do not get any worse, because we may be looking at temporary greens if they do.  hopefully we can push through the remainder of the year get them back playable for next year. 
Please understand that it pains me terribly to have to work on something that reflects poorly on myself.

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