Missed that one

We dodged a serious bullet today! I got 3" in about 20 minutes at my house near Colonial Heritage. The place looks like a warzone after the high winds and hardest rain I have ever seen.

I just got back from the course where we received 0.2". Really glad we missed that one!!

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
Governorsland.com

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.

Money Money Money

And they say money can't buy happiness.......I beg to disagree. This is a picture of the 10th fairway at Caves Valley in Baltimore. It's kind of hard to see but there are fans on the left and right for the fairway......yes.....fans for the fairway. They spend a mint on this course every year and it definitely shows. Absolutely flawless.

This place was truly unbelievable. All walking with caddies and no carts was my favorite part. This instantly went into my top 3 of courses I've played.

Status of the greens

Ok....so next time you are out on the greens look at the greens without looking at the collar or the first 3' of the outside of the green. Most of the greens themselves are looking great, we are just struggling with the collars and the cleanup laps. I have been getting a lot of questions on the status of the greens - How they doing? The areas we are struggling with are areas that I knew we were going to struggle with. They tend to stick out, especially when a lot of these areas are entrance or exit points. So look down....if you see one of these areas when walking off a green, make a mental note to try to avoid these areas with your feet on the next green.

Collars and cleanups are typical problem areas for new greens. That being said...I'm pretty happy with most of the greens....even 5&14 are holding their own. The greens I'm disappointed with are 7,13,15. These greens struggled through this summer a little more that I would have liked to see. Even though some of the greens look rough around the edges, I'm not extremely concerned for their long term health. That is because the centers of the greens look great, just the outsides with high traffic look bad. This tells me that our struggles are more due to a brutal July with a lot of play on new greens, than a larger, more widespread problem.

I wouldn't say the greens are great, wouldn't say that are good, but I would say they are ok and are still rolling decent. I would have to admit that they are far below my expectations from what I had imagined they would look like after this summer, but then again I've been told by more than a few people that often times my expectations are unobtainable. All-in-all not a bad first year for greens that were seeded just 8 months before opening.....not great...but not bad.

We aerify the 19th and 20th of this month and after that we should really be able to take advantage of some good weather and get them sweet. I know patience is not one of my strong suits but I only have to wait a few more weeks to get them going at a pace I can be happy with.

Flushing greens

I decided to flush #5,7,12,13,15 today. Flushing is a tool we use to push out some of the sodium in the soil (which we currently don't have much of) and bring some new, fresh air into the rootzone. These greens are struggling just a hair to recover so I decided to flush them to see if that would help. We did find one drain on 15 that wasn't working properly and fixed it later in the day. If you see the guys digging around the greens the next couple of days, we are checking some of these other drains. A clogged or malfunctioning drain can really put a hurting on a green in the summer. They are really hard to diagnose and find. We found this one, and I think it was the only one that wasn't working, but just to be safe we will be checking some of the others.

Nice!

We could use a few more mornings like this.

Wow

The greens look amazingly good this morning. They are stimping at 9' and have made a huge turnaround in the last few days. This is probably due to the increased fertilizer rates and the nice weather.

We still have a few that we have to baby before really putting the petal to the floor on the green speeds. Most of the greens are ready for that but there are about 5 that I still need to be cautious with. No sense in treating these 5 differently at this point and having inconsistency from green to green.