Spring Flush - Rough

The rough is one area of the golf course that is a challenge this time of the year.  It isn’t that long, we actually are mowing everyday and have also mowed the last two weekends.  It is so dense, thick, and wide leaf blades right now.  Also, the weather has been wet and cloudy keeping the rough moist almost all day long.  This combination of damp, lush, thick, dense, and very heavy grass makes its very penal.  I have lowered the height down just a little from our summer mowing height, the reason I do not lower it more is because the grass height is a direct relation to the root depth, and we need to develop a large root mass to make it through the hot summer.  If we shave down the top, then we will shave down the root system underneath and have many more dry thin areas come July and August.  That’s why the fairways take a lot more inputs during the summer of fertilizers, chemicals, and handwatering, because the lower height is a smaller root mass.  

What is interesting, is that I feel our soils and turf in the rough are self-sustainable, we have not fertilized the rough in 3 years and look how healthy it is.  All the years of decomposing organic matter and returning the grass clippings allow the rough to feed itself.  That’s why we can’t control the density and thickness by cutting back on the fertilizer, because we have not fertilized the entire rough in 3 years.  Once we get a little warmer the rough will take on a thinner leaf blade, dry out in the canopy, and be much easier to get a club through it.

Greens Aerification - Fertilization

Today we fertilized greens with a granular product.  Greens only get two granular applications a year, 1 in the spring and 1 in the fall, paired with the timing of aerification, and then just small amounts of various liquid products during the growing season.  This allows us to "spoon feed" the plant exactly what it needs and regulate our growth to a minimal level to maintain the green speeds that we want.

Fertilizing greens - 1 direction, overlapping half way with half the rate to achieve accuracy

One thing we do different than a lot of people is to fertilize the greens 5 days before aerification.  Our philosophy with this is that it takes 5-7 days for the product to dissolve into solution, be taken up by the plant, and to start growth.  By doing this now, the plant is actively growing the day we aerify and it considerably speeds up our recovery time after aerfication.  Many people aerify their greens and then fertilize right when they are done, I feel they loose a week of active growth by doing this and this is how we have been able to get our greens to recover so quickly after an intense aerification.

Yes, when we aerify we do remove about 15-18% of the green, organic matter, so we are removing that amount of our fertilizer, but I truly feel it is worth it when you consider a week of growth in the recovery process.  Greens aerification will be next week April 16 and 17, and the course will be closed for those two days.