Dormant Sodding

One thing that we do a lot of here at Lewiston Country Club is dormant sodding throughout the winter. Our mild weather with minimal snow allows us to work out on the golf course about 70% of the time.  All of the turf is dormant, but we can still do projects, prep sod areas, and lay sod.  The sod covers up the soil during winter golf and lays dormant.  Once things began to green up and grow in the spring then the turf roots down.

20 trees were removed this winter, stumps ground, and sodded the stumps in January

Smooth transition come spring of those sodded stumps

It works well for us because our springs tend to have a fair amount of rain.  We do need to keep a close eye on the sod in the spring , as it can dry out very quickly.  If it was a hot dry spring then we could find ourselves handwatering all the sod that we have laid, but most of the time our spring rains allow for a smooth transition.

New forward tee built and sodded in February

Have not mowed, ran irrigation, or anything yet - and roots are 3 inches as of March 21

We are irrigating just that tee right now to keep our shallow roots moist 

This is a concept that works very well for us, because the spring is always so busy getting the golf course ready, starting maintenance, pressurizing irrigation, and all the other work that goes into getting the course ready for play.  That by doing our sod work and larger projects over the winter we can allocate more staff to the project at that time and use labor resources during the spring for course maintenance.

Irrigation trench sodded when the turf was not growing

Winter Play - Divots and Ballmarks

I have been asked about filling divots over the winter and is it worthwhile?  The answer is yes, please continue to fill divots and fix ballmarks even during the winter months when we are dormant.

The reason is - even though the soil temperatures are low enough where seed will not germinate, the seed will start to absorb moisture and stay viable until the soil temperatures warm up again, and when that happens the seed will actually be ahead of the game and germinate faster compared to if we just went and filled all the divots this spring. 

Please watch the short video below about dormant seeding produced by a superintendent in CO and a mentor of mine that I once worked for as an assistant at the Country Club of the Rockies.

http://www.turfnet.com/page/turfnet-tv.html/_/kevin-ross/

Also, by filling divots it creates a smoother surface for our winter playing surface.

Lastly, please make sure to fix all ballmarks as it is even more critical this time of the year because the turf is not re-growing itself and we are not creating a new putting surface everyday.  Over the winter we are playing on the same putting surface day after day so it is even more critical to maintain the surface we have for the next day.