Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Maintenance Update 08/07/12

I would like to give a quick update on what we did on the course while we were closed yesterday:
  • The greens were verticut twice, mowed and topdressed again.  While they will be a little bumpy for the next couple of days, we will continue rolling daily to smooth them out and keep the speed up.  With the high temperatures and need to water nightly, the greens see a lot of growth during the day, making it difficult to maintain quick green speeds.  We will continue with weekly applications of growth regulator as well as continue the process of verticutting and topdressing to help keep them more consistent.  As the nights get longer and daytime highs start to decrease, the leaf blades will get tighter and we will be able to maintain a little quicker green speeds.
  • The approaches were aerified with 1/2" tines, cleaned off and mowed.  The turf in the approaches and green surrounds is very thick and we have not been getting a very good cut with our mower.  The plugs were allowed to dry then we used a metal drag mat to bust the soil and incorporate it into the turf canopy.  This should not inhibit play and we should be seeing a much better cut with our mower.
  • The hot weather continues to dry the course out.  We have been limited with our water, but we have been spot watering dry areas of the fairways daily.  Inevitably, with high temperatures and low humidity, areas are going to dry out and go off color.  We will continue to do our best to hold on to what we have, hopefully for only a few more weeks until relief.
Thanks for all of the positive comments and hang in there for hopefully a few more weeks!
Chuck McCaskill, CGCS
aggieturfman98@gmail.com