Irrigation leaks

Wh have a few leaks on the course from trees hitting heads and pipe.

Tree work

This is one of the two TRCC tree crews cutting a tree on #11. We have two crews with two mini excavators working around the course. There are also two tree contractors working on the course.

We are getting everything cleaned up pretty fast. We have been working 12-14 hour shifts to get everything cleaned up this week. Should be ready to open by Thursday or Friday.

Hurricane Irene

We are getting the golf course ready for the storm. Hopefully the storm will turn to the east but it doesn't look like thats going to be the case. This storm could be devastating tithe course. I saw first hand what a cat 1 hurricane did to the course (Isabel) and this looks like it may be at least a cat 2 when it gets to Norfolk.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Sent from my iPhone

This isn’t looking promising

Fun in the sun

Duff

Verticut PG2

PG2

The second step after mowing down the green is to heavily verticut the green to remove the organic material and thatch in the top inch. All this material will be removed before aeration.

Chipping green

Here is a picture of Jeremy (2nd Assistant Superintendent) mowing PG2. We are scalping in down to get ready to heavily aerate, verticut, and topdress in preparation to gas the green next Monday.

Right now all the greens on the course are being mown at 0.165" - this green was mown 4 times today at 0.150, 0.130, and twice at 0.095. We need to get as much green grass off of it as we can in prep for the gassing process.

After #5 collar

The finished product. Once the sod takes hold we will scalp it down and start maintaining it at collar height.

We're also doing 2,8,4,and some others depending on how much sod we have left.

Sodding collars

Removing collar on #5.

New fan #5

Pictured is the new fan on #5. It pushes 4-5x more air than the old fan and it's actually a little more quiet. This fan should really help this green the remainder of this year and years to come.

Sodding spots on greens.

We've been pulling sod off of the chipping green to put on some weak areas on 2, 5, 6, and 15. The areas we've been doing on the course look really good and are helping the recovery effort. The greens look 100% better in the last couple days and are healing fast.

This chipping green is going to be heavily aerated, verticut, and topdressed next week. We are going to gas it on the 29th to completely kill it, then re-seed it to a new bent grass. It should take about 2-3 months to grow in before re-opening it again. I wanted to get as much good sod off it before we killed it all.

Topdressing Fairways

We started topdressing the fairways today for the second and last time this year. The tees and approaches will also be done this week.

Rainfall

Got .15" of rain yesterday. That's the first trace of rainfall in a couple weeks. Course is really starting to dry out. This is a picture of some spot watering in the rough Sunday morning.

Greens

Here is a picture of #5 green in some of the thin spots. The greens are looking much better but the bad areas have still been slow to recover. All these greens have been seeded and should start to recover in the next few weeks.

You can see the green spots in the bad areas - these are the aeration holes from the core aeration in May. This picture shows the importance of core aeration on greens. The holes allow for longer roots in these holes, increased oxygen exchange, and decreased compaction.

Greens

I flushed greens with 120 min of water last night. The greens didn't look as good as I expected them to look this morning after a flush but they are holding ground.

The bad spots are looking bad but the rest of the green is filling in. I'm going to start seeding the rest of the greens this week. #15 was seeded on Tuesday.

Rough

The rough the last few weeks has been extremely thick. This is the perfect summer for Bermuda grass - hot and humid. We are having to mow some spots 2 and 3 times to get a clean cut. It's making a mess with the clippings so we are having to drag and blow behind the mowers. The rough height is at the same height its just been difficult to keep up with. With the amount of rough we have on the golf course we can only mow rough once a week. I've been working the guys longer ot hours this week and will continue for the next few to try and get around a little faster.

Tomorrow we are going to put down a growth regulator in the rough on a few holes to see if it will help. This is the same growth regulator that we use on tees and fairways throughout the growing season. It's expensive and time consuming to put it down in the rough, but we should be able to see if it is worth it in a few weeks. Going to spray 12, 16, 17, 18 - those are usually the worst ones.

Collars

Sodding out the collar on #13.

Seed germination

Starting to see some seed germination in the spots on greens and collars that have been seeded. These spots have been seeded to A-4 bent grass that was coated with an enhanced seed coating.

Rough

The rough is very thick. The last couple weeks we've had a difficult time keeping up with the mowing. This is usually the case for a normal August, but this year it has been even worse because of the awesome bermudagrass growing weather we have had this past month.

Irrigation

Ryan fixing an irrigation head on #13.

Collars

Some of the worst collars have been changed out to bermuda. Most of the collars are about half Bermuda half bent now anyway. This should give the collars a better, more consistent look. Playability should be a little better because the Bermuda requires less water - they will be a little more firm.

Pulling the sod for the collars off the small target greens at the range. These areas are already cut the same height as the grass around the greens. I am just replacing the stuff we cut off the range with purchased sod. This will help to minimize scalping around greens when growing it in.

Flushing greens

Thought this was a cool picture. It didn't come out as good as it looked in person.

Had to come in to check on the flushing process. Had a problem with the irrigation clock on #2 so had to flush manually. Thank goodness for mobile technology - I checked on the process from my phone and saw there was a problem - came in to do 2 manually and check on process with other greens.

Come on September!!!

Weather and flushing

It looks like we may have a break coming our way as far as the temps are concerned. The chance of rain nearly everyday next week isn't what you want to see this time of year but at least the forecasted temps are not that high.

As far as today goes......The rain missed us this evening but that's just as well. I'm going to flush greens tonight with the irrigation system. The greens have been slow to recover, partially due to to weather and partially due to the amount of sodium built up in the top inch of the soil profile. The sodium prevents the plant from recovering from stress, even with proper nutrition present and favorable weather.

Geese

Duff - looking for the geese on #4....... but nothing. They were irritated to the point of leaving - finally. Let's see if we can keep it that way.

Test results

I got back all the test results I was looking for the greens. The results confirmed what I thought might have been the problem - a little bit of disease and a lot of bad weather. We had some Pythium Root Rot, some Bacterial Wilt, and some Anthracnose but most of these could be found in just about any bentgrass green sample in the Mid-Atlantic this time of year. Our biggest reason for the recent decline of the greens is the weather. The heavy rain followed by extreme heat and humidity caused our bentgrass and poa to shut down. These conditions don't allow the plant to transpire and cool itself. It could be compared to heat stroke in humans when your body stops sweating, not allowing your body to cool itself.

When the plant is weakened by this occurrence it provides a window of opportunity for pests like diseases to flourish, even with all the preventive measures we take with our spray program. The best way to get the greens to recover is limit mowing and rolling, continue to provide nutrition that is readily available to the plant, stay on a curative spray program, and wait for some cooler weather - all of which we are doing.

Come on September!!!!!!

Greens

Greens look much better this morning after a 70 degree night. We've seen some recovery in the last day and if these temps break soon like forecasted we should be in good shape.

This July has had some rain, and humidity that we rarely see in this area. Most of the clubs in Tidewater are struggling with greens right especially any courses with pencross/poa greens. Comparatively speaking I think we are in good....better.....shape than some of the other guys in the area. This is directly related to budget and having the resources available to put down everything we need, to help survive a difficult weather pattern like this.

Collars

Here is a picture of us sodding out collars. We are changing out some of the collars that we have problems with every year to Bermuda.

Rain

Just checked radar.......more rain. That's the last thing we need with high 90's forecasted for the next 2 days.

Sent from my iPhone