We are right in the middle of what is turning out to be a scorching hot summer. I believe we are in a stretch of 20+ days of seeing temperatures over 100 degrees with this week being the hottest. We have not seen any measurable precipitation since early June. The golf course is holding up relatively well to the conditions. We have been relying heavily on the two wells to produce our irrigation water. One well has been producing about 120 gallons per minute and the other around 60 gallons per minute. The tee and green complexes are watered each evening, but the rest of the course only gets watered every two or three nights. I have eliminated irrigating the out of play areas and am concentrating on keeping the tee to green corridors in good condition.
One negative impact of using well water for irrigation is what it does to the soil. Based on the chemical composition of water pulled from the Paluxy aquifer, which provides water for most wells in this area, compaction occurs much more easily. Despite the amount of water we apply to the course, it is still quite hard. We have been treating the greens and tees via mechanical and chemical means to combat this.
Here are some things we've been doing over the last couple of weeks:
- All of the tees were aerified and holes filled with sand. The sand will help aleviate some of the compaction along with gypsum applications. After we aerified, the remaining ryegrass from this past winter died, leaving several bare areas on the tees. We totally rebuilt the green tee box on #9. It was elevated about six inches with sand and we coated it with aerification plugs from a few of the approaches. It has started greening up nicely and we should be able to open it back up in the coming weeks. We have also resurfaced the entire red tee on #1, the back of #7 and the entire red tee on #10. Depending on the materials we have left, we will do some modifications to the white tee on #14.
- The greens were aerified one week ago today and have healed up very nicely. We removed 3/8" cores and filled with sand. With the extremely high temperatures and the need to water frequently, the turf on the greens tends to get quite "puffy". Before we aerified, the walking mowers were causing some scalping so we turning to just using the tri-plex. After aerifying and aggressive verti-cutting, we are back to using the walking mowers. We will continue an aggressive verti-cutting program along with topdressing with sand to combat the scalping.
- This past weekend, we lost a big tree on #4 (which happened to be one of the most penal trees on that hole). With a little bit of wind, the trunk just snapped. This is quite common under extreme drought conditions.
- Mowing heights are as follows: Greens are at .120"; Approaches, fairways and tees are at .450"; the intermediate rough is at 1"; the primary rough is at 1.5"; the fescue is at 3".
Thanks,
Chuck
