Rough #10

These scalped lines in the rough on 10 are from a bolt that broke on one of the decks on the rough mower. That side of the deck was lower than the rest and resulted in some scalped streaks. This grass should pop right back in a week - that's the great thing about Bermuda grass. If that was a cool season grass like fescue or bent this time of year it would really hurt it.

Collars

We are back to using the lattice when mowing greens. This really increases the amount of time it takes the guys to mow, but it helps with wear on the collars. We put the lattice down so the mowers travel over the lattice instead of the collar. Any little bit of wear reduction helps this time of year when it comes to the collars.

Spraying Fairways

We are spraying fairways and tees this morning with some fertilizer, growth regulator, and a wetting agent. I like to spray this once a month, but when the weather is this hot and wet/humid I have to shrink the spray intervals to 3 weeks. The grass ends up growing through the regulator faster when the weather is this warm. This spray mix is a great tool for keeping a consistent height on the fairways, decreasing labor by not having to mow fairways 4 times a week (we can limit it to 3), and saving some water (the wetting agent helps to wet the profile more consistently).

I put Gypsum down on Sunday because our calcium levels were pretty low from all the rain that we have got this month.  This was a new kind of gypsum that I was able to get from a vendor on short notice.  Usually one rotation of the irrigation heads will make gypsum disappear - not this time.  Even though I put down a heavy rate, the fertilizer didn't water in all that easy.  It is just now pretty much gone, and needless to say...that will be the last time I purchase that brand of gypsum.

Greens vs PG2

Here is a picture of PG2 this morning.  This green has been rolling about 1-1.5' faster than the rest of the greens.  Being about a year older that the others and planted on existing mix, it is much more mature than the rest of the greens.  We maintain this green exactly the same way we do all the others. 

This is exciting to see.  What that tells me is that the other greens should be much smoother and faster once they get a little older.  It will take much less maintenance and stress on the greens to keep them consistently fast.  We should start to see this maturation by this fall.

Pick em up!

You can see the scuffs across the green in front of my hose.

I'm going to start posting a Pick em up post every week - and believe me I won't have a tough time finding a new pic every week to demonstrate my point.

Equipment issues

We were in the process of topdressing fairways and we got 5 fairways done before our spreader broke down. I had planned on topdressing until dark, taking advantage of our Monday maintenance day, but unfortunately I had to send the boys home a little earlier than expected. I've had a new spreader on order for about a month now and should be here by next week. This is one of the main reasons that we try to replace equipment before it's completely broken down. Reliability becomes a major issue and in this case we will now have to do most of the topdressing this week in play.

We are fortunate enough that TRCC does give us sufficient capital to replace our equipment when needed -so we can avoid situations like this. Unfortunately we got a little unlucky with this one - seeing our new spreader will be here next week.