What????

Where is all this heat coming from? I'm really glad we aerified a week early now!

We need to fertilize greens to getting them going just a little. Might have to hold off with this heat. Was planning on spraying on Monday.

Greens

Mowed greens for the first time since Sunday. Greens turned out pretty good after the verticutting, aeration, topdressing, rolling, etc. we should be in good shape for the remainder of the fall. They will be putting like pool tables in a few weeks.

Unfortunately the heat is starting to set in for a few days. Figures....we don't get heat until we really beat them up. It will be important to keep them a little wetter than normal with this heat and having holes in them. The topdressing and holes will make them dry out really fast.

The greens are still a little soft. End of the summer, there are not any greens in this area that are firm...not any of the superintendents I've talked to say they have firm greens. This is from the typical root loss through a summer and having to keep more moisture in the top inch. You have to keep the water where the roots are. If that top inch, where the majority of the root mass is this time of year dries out, the plant is going to wilt and start to check out. As the humidity starts to drop and we develop more root mass, the greens will start to firm up.

Topdressing

We topdressed the back 9 yesterday for a second time. We had some equipment issues yesterday. After a repair we have to come back out and put more sand down. I want to make sure that we get most of the holes filled so we don't have to keep coming back and hitting them with light topdressings.

We finished the front after a difficult morning this am. Couldn't get all the sand to dry with the fog. We will have to come back on the front 9 greens this afternoon and roll the tire tracks out and blow any access sand. Ran out of time this morning.

I'll be glad when this week is over. Aeration puts us behind with all the rest of the normal course work. It's so labor intensive and takes a lot of guys, we end up behind on the mowing that we would normally complete on Monday and Tuesday.

Aeration

Knocking it out!

Wetting agent vs not

This is a good pic of the approach, which we spray with wetting agent, and the fairway which we don't. Big difference in color. I'm going to try and budget enough to treat all the fairways next year....we'll see.

Little dry

The greens were wilting yesterday as we were trying to aerate, topdress, roll, drag, fert, etc. I don't like to water them too much before we run the topdresser over them because it will leave tire tracks......but then if they don't have enough they will start to wilt.

No problems though....aeration is here which is the official end of summer in my book!

Verticutting

We verticut all the greens Thursday and Friday. I wanted to get this done before we adrift on Monday. Ideally we would do it in front of the aerators but we don't have an extra 6 guys on staff to do this in front of the aeration. The verticutting really helps to thin out the turf canopy. It helps the leaf blades to stand up instead of laying over on each other. It results in a faster, true roll...especially after the topdressing.

I'm looking forward to aeration on Monday. Fall aeration is the official end of my worrying season. The greens are in decent shape and after the aeration and topdressing on Monday and Tuesday, they should be sweet through the fall.

Brent Graham, CGCS
Director of Golf Maintenance
Two Rivers Country Club
1950 Two Rivers Rd.
Williamsburg, VA 23185
Cell: 757-592-0840
Office: 757-258-4606
Bgraham@tworiversclub.com
Governorsland.com

Fox

A fox dug up the bunker on 1 green last night. Maybe time for another "wildlife relocation".

Nice

We are gonna need this.

Greens and sodium

The greens are much softer today than they have been lately. I watered them a little heavier last night and we put some gypsum punt this morning with additional water. This gypsum went out in preparation for a flush tonight. There has been some sodium buildup because of the well usage and lack of rainfall.

I like to flush on a Sunday because we are closed on Mondays and you don't have to worry about all the traffic on soft greens. They should start drying down Tuesday depending on the weather.

Dry

We need some rain. Scheduled to run over 500,000 gal of water tonight.

Common Bermuda

You can see a lot of common Bermuda in the fairways. The 419 Hybrid Bermuda is regulated pretty good with the amount of growth regulators that we have been using but the common is largely unaffected. There is no way to control the common other than complete turf renovation. It's not necessarily a problem, it's just visually not as uniform.

This is a battle that courses with older fairways have. Most people probably don't even notice, but it is something that we try and manage. The common acts differently than the 419 with fertilizers, regulators, watering, herbicides, and growth rate.

Traffic

Great tweet.

Algae

It's hard to tell from the pics but after a fungicide spray, topdressing, solid tine aeration and some drier weather the algae that was on some of the greens goes away in a hurry.

The greens look really good after the topdressing.

Fairways

Mowing fairways again this morning. They have been growing pretty fast. This will be the third straight day that they have been mown. We started spraying growth regulators on them yesterday. This time of year the regulators only last about 2 weeks.

Topdressing and aeration

We gave the greens a much needed med-heavy topdressing today. Followed that up with a small solid tine aeration. This will help encourage new root growth and help the greens dry down a little with the recent wet weather we have been having.

The topdressing will really help the greens from getting soft and puffy.

Going to roll them tomorrow and then mow on Wednesday through the rest of the week. These solid tine holes will fill in really fast this time of year.

It's important to aerate them every once in a while throughout the summer, especially since we have not pulled a core since last fall. We will be pulling a small core end of August.

Rough

It's getting to be that time of year. The rough is starting to get really think as it normally does in August. We haven't raised the height, it's just how the grass grows in this area, this time of year.

Rain

1.5" yesterday. Carts are still on fairways.