News and Notes June 24, 2011

What a great week it has been!  Mother Nature blessed us with almost three inches of rain over Monday and Tuesday nights.  After the rain on Tuesday evening, Fossil Creek rose to just over the bridge on #10, which means it came out of the banks onto #'s 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 18.  The damage was minimal, as there was just some debris washed up and a little bit of mud washed into some areas, but the fairways are open and the majority of the mess has been cleaned up.  While we were fortunate to receive the three inches, I spoke with the Superintendent at Fossil Creek and he mentioned they received five inches, which explains why the creek rose like it did.

I have received lots of comments about the "hardness" of many of the tee boxes, particularly the green tees.  I can assure you this is not from lack of water.  Of all the areas of the golf course, the tees receive the most amount of irrigation.  The problem with many of the green tees is that the majority of them are just cut out of the rough, meaning they are composed of pure native soil, which has a very high clay content.  With the hot and windy weather we've been seeing, it's very difficult to keep this soil wet.  The rain helped out immensely.  To combat this, we will be going out next week and aerifying all of the tees.  We will clean off the cores and topdress heavily with sand to fill all of the holes.  This will be a tedious process and will more than likely take several days.  I apologize in advance if it will be an inconvenience, but it should be a great benefit.  As modern golf courses are constructed, tee areas are shaped with native soil and capped with four inches of sand, which prevents them from getting overly hard.  We will continue to do what we can with what we have to provide the best playing surfaces possible.

The greens are really doing great and are rolling very well.  Since they have healed nicely from the last aerification, we will be double verticutting them every week, including this past Wednesday.  This will help keep the canopy thin, keep the surface smooth and hopefully keep the speed where it is.  We continue to use a combination of walk mowers and the tri-plex riding mower.  One thing we have added to the walking mowers is an out-front broom.  The tri-plex is already equipped with this.  As the mowers go across the greens, the brooms help to stand the grass up before being clipped and we see a much better cut.  This will also help to knock down worm castings prior to mowing as well as keep the grain down to a minimum.  Our mechanic was able to take the head from a standard push broom and attach it to the bucket of the walking mowers.  The picture below shows his handy work:

All other areas of the course continue to do well.  There is a large population of dallis grass in most of the rough areas of the course.  I have been spending as much time as I can spot spraying each plant.  Dallis grass is very difficult to control.  As the plant gets mowed, almost any part of the clippings can create a new plant, which is why you seldom see just one plant by itself.  The chemicals used to control dallis grass have a burning effect on bermuda, but will not kill it.  Therefore there will be many brown spots in the roughs where I sprayed.  In a matter of a few weeks, the dallis grass plant will disappear and the bermuda will fill the void.

The following is a list of our current mowing heights:

• Greens height is set at .110"
• Tee height is set at .375"
• Approach height is set at .375"
• Fairway height is set at .450"
• Intermediate rough height is set at 1"
• Primary rough height is set at 1.5"
• Fescue and native rough height is set at 3"
• Note 1/8" = .125; 3/8" = .375; 1/2" = .500

The extended forecast looks like we are in for much of the same of what we've been seeing: hot, dry and windy.  I hope you get a chance to come out and play early to beat the heat and enjoy the course conditions. 

As always, have a great weekend and don't hesitate to contact me if I can be of any assistance.

Chuck
aggieturfman98@gmail.com