Greens - Please Read

Our greens have had me searching for solutions the last couple of weeks. You have probably seen us digging around the greens checking drains, making sure that they are all working properly.

The greens have been doing ok - 14 or 15 of them look fantastic but be have about 6 or so that are struggling a little. The majority of the greens look good, just the high traffic areas and outside of the greens are showing stress. Really the only 2 greens that are showing stress in the middle of the greens are 7 and 15.

I got some news this evening that can help me explain some of the problems that we have been having. I took some soil tests last week and just got the results. The nitrates are through the roof. About a month ago I took some samples and we were in great shape with the nitrates. Since that time we stayed pretty wet with all the rain and the temps really spiked - especially the nighttime temps. This kind of weather pattern really encourages the microbial activity to go crazy. Microbes eat which release Nitrogen into the soil - this is sometimes good, and sometimes bad. This coupled with the poultry manure that we used in the mix really caused the nitrates to spike. I have been really shy with the nitrogen applications this year because I had an inclination that this was going to happen eventually - we just didn't expect them to get this high. I have just under 1 lb of nitrogen per 1000sqft down year to date. The average USGA recommendation is about 5 lbs per year. So as you can see, even with the small amount of N that I put down, we have excess amounts of N in the soil from the PPM and all the microbial activity.

A typical question is....why is this a problem? Too much N causes to plant to sprint through the marathon, eventually tiring out. It tends to give the grass a mealy look that is a sign that the plant isn't eating and breathing like it should.

My plan to counteract this problem is flushing these greens more often. Flushing is a tool we use to remove unwanted nutrients and introduce some fresh air to the roots. These nitrates are highly soluble, so a flush is a great tool to lower these nitrate levels. They will build back up quickly, so this is something that I might have to do for the next couple of weeks.

This decline can be noticed on a few greens - greens that have compounding problems. Problems like high traffic, young age, shade and limited air movement, compounded with high nitrates cause some of these areas to decline. Greens that don't have that amount of compounding problems are not as rough (river holes). All the greens are still very young and have not developed any thatch (which acts as a coushin to defend against things like traffic and ball marks) and have had a ton of play on them the last month. This is like sending a high school football player in to the NFL - they are going to get beat up.

All that being said.....we are almost through this summer and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Some of these things we did, like the ppm in the mix, wasn't the best thing for the greens in their first year, it was the best decision for the next 20+ years. The sand and mix that we picked was selected with the long term sustainability of the greens in mind.