Friday, May 1, 2015

Two ways to kill bermuda

It's been a rough winter for the second year in a row. The bermuda throughout Virginia and the Carolinas has been hit pretty hard by this cold spell. I'm hearing more and more stories every day about the turf loss in the area due to winterkill. We have some select areas but just a fraction of what a lot of other courses have. Believe it or not, I would attribute this to our clay soils that hold so much water in the winter, and our common bermuda contamination in the fairways. The common seems like it doesn't get hit as hard as the 419, and the clay soils prevent a dry down. A lot of areas and courses with a sand base are decimated with winterkill. You can see this in our tees - they are much further behind the rest of the course - and they are sand based. 

The recent cold mornings haven't helped anything either. The bermuda is just sitting there until we get some heat.  Looks like next week we'll get some growing weather to get things rolling. We just finished a fertilizer application on the fairways before the rains on friday...so when it starts warming up this weekend, there is some added Nitrogen to get these things bumping. 

Shouldn't be long now. 


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

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