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For the past couple weeks and leading into the next month, the maintenance staff has been very busy with many applications on the golf course.  These applications have ranged from topdressing greens tees, and approaches.  Fertilizing all areas of the golf course, applications of growth regulators, control products, fungicides, bio stimulants, seedhead control on Poa Annua, broadleaf weed control, wetting agent applications, crabgrass preventer, and micronutrients.

These applications are all very important this time of the year.  As we are trying to build up the strongest, healthiest plant with the deepest root system that we can for the hot weather and stress we will put on the plant come June, July, and August.  For about the next 2 months we have optimal growing conditions for the plant and we need to try to make it as healthy as possible before we run the long race of summer.

Poa Annua

Right now there are many things happening on the golf course with Poa Annua.  We talked in the last post, Poa Seedheads - Proxy, about the production of seed heads and how we control them.  There are also many examples currently occurring on why Poa Annua is a weaker and undesirable specie of turf on the golf course.  First we have the production of seed heads, affecting the playability and populating the soil and matt layer of our golf course with seeds that are ready to germinate whenever the opportunity is right.  Any opening in the turf canopy from a divot, a ballmark, a worm casting, mechanical damage from golf carts or mowers, or any disturbance to the turf causing an opening allows the seed to germinate and grow.

Overall poa is a very week specie in the family of turfgrass.  It does not perform well in cold or hot conditions.  Last month when the turf was first coming out of dormancy, I posted about the bentgrass growing and the poa having a sunken appearance on the greens because it was slower in breaking dormancy and was not growing at the same rate of creeping bentgrass.   We will see very similar conditions in the heat of summer, June, July, and august; the Poa will appear struggling while the bentgrass will be doing fine.  Poa is also much more susceptible to diseases.  Right now we have small areas in our fairways that have become inoculated with Pink Snow Mold disease, all of the turf effected by pink snow mild is Poa and the bluegrass and bentgrass in the fairways have no signs of the disease.

Tan areas are infected poa, greens areas are creeping bentgrass


 

 

During the growing season, Poa requires more water, more fertilizer, and a higher degree of maintenance.

 Poa Annua makes management of a turfgrass stand very difficult.  It is difficult to keep out or eradicate.  Once you get a high percentage of it then you are managing it, leading to  a very intense “babysitting” program in the heat of the summer.

Every golf course you go to will have some population of Poa Annua on it. It is very hard to control because of many different genotypes, and very versatile to adapting to any condition.  There are a few ideal climates where the high temperature is around 80 degrees every day, low humidity leading to a lack of disease pressure, and higher amounts of precipitation creating a nice germination of continued seed production.

In summary:

A.      Poa is very difficult and challenging to keep out, it exists in some population on all courses.

B.      A very rapid seed producer, increasing its reproduction chances

C.      Many different genotypes exist

Once you manage it, then you will deal with;

A.      The production of seed heads affecting playability

B.      A week specie in hot and cold conditions

C.      More susceptible to diseases

D.      Higher requirements of water and more fertilizer

E.      The ability to adapt to any conditions – mowing height, traffic, compaction

Poa seedheads - Proxy

In the last 48 hours, the Poa Annua has flowered and the seedheads have popped in all short mowed turf - tees, greens, approaches, and fairways.  We have made 2 applications so far this spring on both greens and approaches to control the seedheads that are produced in the spring by the Poa.  So far we have once again gotten great results and probably have 90-95% control of the seedheads.

In this picture, the fairway is to the left of the lens cap and the approach is on the right.  See the difference in seedheads from the left side to the right side.

Here is a picture of 9 approach and 9 fairway, fairway untreated on the left, and the treated approach on the right.  You can draw a line right down the middle, showing where the edge of the spray boom was during the applications.

In these two pictures below, I am kneeling down right at the approach fairway line.  The first picture is looking back down the fairway (see all the seedheads), the second pict is looking down the approach toward the green (very few seedheads)

Fairway view:

Approach view:

This control of the seedhead production is very important to the smoothness of our greens.  Without it, the greens would be extremely bumpy.  Also, it decreases the amount of the amount of Poa Annua in our approaches, as it limits the amount of Poa seed that is available to germinate.

In my next post, I will talk about things we are seeing on the golf course right now with our mixture of Poa Annua, creeping bentgrass, and kentuckey bluegrass fairways, and why we are trying to limit the amount of Poa.

Staffing and Updates

I wanted to give an update on our staffing plan for the season and the current condition of the golf course. 

I am going to approach the season the same as last year, and due to our budget reductions in these trying times for all of golf, I am going to utilize a very small staff in the spring and fall months of March/April and Oct/Nov.  This will allow me to operate with our typical size staff in the summer months, producing the great conditioned product that we all have become accustomed too during our heavy play prime time of the season. 

In the shoulder months with the smaller staff, it will mean that it will take as a little longer to get around to everything.  As you have seen there are weeds coming on in the golf course and the landscape beds need some weed attention.  Also, fairways and rough are not being mowed quit as frequent as the summer months.  We are still getting to all of these items, it just may not be as frequent and detailed as our normal maintenance. 


So for the next 4 weeks, when you see longer turf in the fairways and rough, or more weeds than expected in landscape beds and golf course turf, you will understand that I am trying to conserve labor for the prime summer months.

Greens Update

The greens are really recovering well from aerification, and by the weekend I think they will be putting fairly well.  On Monday,  I went out and put down a second topdressing on greens to top off the aerification holes and ensure each one is full and going to roll smooth. 

The staff has continued brushing and working the sand in.  The cloudy and cooler weather, with the one frost morning, is not helping our soil temperatures and growth, but they are still growing and making progress.  This second topdressing is very important to get them back to the speed and smoothness we are sue to in the summer.

The plan for this week is to get back on the regular mowing and rolling, and then we will see a large improvement in the next 5 days.

Greens Aerification

The maintenance staff has been working very hard this week to complete the aerification of greens.  Here is a look at the 7 step process that we go through for aerifying the greens in the spring and fall.
165 man hours were spent in 2 days to core all the greens.

First cores are pulled.

We used 1/2" hollow tines on 1 1/4" spacing.

Alook after we have pulled cores. I do beleive in aggressive cultural pracitces for the putting surfaces.
  

Then the challenging part of picking up plugs, lots of labor and man hours on shovels and blowers.

The new sweeper is a very good tool to have.  It sweeps up the cores with brushes, collects them in a hopper, and leaves a very clean green surface, decreasing the amount of hand labor we had to perform.

The core sweeper then dumps into a shuffle vehicle to haul the plugs away and maximize the time the sweeper is actually sweepng.

The finished product after cores are collected.

Then the roller to smooth out all tire tracks, foot prints, and leave a smooth green.

The greens are then topdressed with pure sand.  Nobody has ever accussed me of going too lite on the sand.   We applied 45 tons of sand over 90,000 sq ft, putting down about 1 3/4" of sand to fill the holes and to be worked into the turf canopy.

Then the sand is brushed in, irrigation is ran to help work the sand in, and more brushing.

The finished product after 2 days and ready for golf.

People may say why so much sand, the holes are filled and there is a lot left on the surface?  The holes are not actually completely filled.  They have bridged the hole where the upper part is full, but the bottom of the hole is still empty.  This week, the staff will continue to brush and water to work the sand down in the holes.  As the sand is worked down in the holes and the holes become full, then the sand on the surface will disappear.

This aggressive coring practice, heavy amount of sand, and precision of cleaning, rolling, filling every hole, is what allows us to have such firm and smooth putting surfaces come summer.

Thank you the entire staff for a great job over the two long says.

Cart Path Exit Signs

We have put out our directional cart exit signs for the season.

The purpose of these signs it to direct the location where we want golf carts to exit the cart path each day.  When golf carts exact the exact same location day after day, we get those unsightly worn areas along the cart path.  By moving around our traffic, and allowing the turf to recover the following day, then we can have better turf quality throughout our high traffic areas.

Please look for the cart signs and exit the path where they are located and in the direction they are pointing.