Drain 11 green

We dug up the drain on 11 yesterday to make sure that it was working like it should. That's a deep hole!

It was working as it should...it just makes me feel a lot better knowing we don't have a clogged drain that's keeping the green wet.

A new fan for this green next year will do wonders.

Wet! Greens

These are some pictures from yesterday on 11. The greens were really wet and yellowed out. The 3" of rain was both good and bad.

There was some algae that popped up and the greens were yellowed out. The rain flushed the sodium out of the profile, it was acting as a natural growth regulator (and not a positive regulation) on the bentgrass, which was good, but it also pushed out a lot of the available nitrates through the soil, resulting in some yellowing for a few days. We are surging with growth right now even though they are under chemical regulation. For this reason, we mowed on Monday and Tuesday, but I needed to give them a break today. Normally we would mow everyday but they were looking wore down yesterday from all the rain and lack of sunlight.

11 was the only one that really looked bad. We ran the Subair quite a bit yesterday and today which helped dry it out.

They look 100% better today. Now that we are completely healed from aeration...They should start to get progressively faster every day going forward through the fall. I'm going to really start pushing them now that I know we are through the recovery.

Greens

The greens are loaded with sodium right now. The plant just does not operate correctly under these conditions. Hopefully this natural rainfall will build up and we will get some fresh, sodium free water in the greens. The salt is one of the reasons they are slow in some areas to recover from the aeration and a little puffy and slow.

I'm ready to get on with this fall - the greens are going to be sweet as soon as they recover from the big aeration and topdressing. Now I just need the weather to cooperate. This heat and humidity can go away.

I'm excited to see the current condition of the edges that we thought we would really struggle with this summer. They are in really good shape and will finally have the opportunity to mature. This will give them a head start going into what should be a really good year, next year. The greens are starting to mature and can start to handle more stress.

I was really careful with them this year, trying to take it easy on them their first full year of play. You wouldn't even believe me if I told you how much money, time and effort we put into these edges this year. It's nice to see the effort pay off. We could have done all of this and more to the old greens and they would have been really, really unhappy and sick right now with this amount of sodium and some late summer heat and humidity. It's easy to forget what the old ones were like (no one wants to forget more than me) but there is a huge difference between these greens and the old ones. Our greens speed never consistently fell below 8.5-9' all summer....even with the conservative management because of the relative immaturity. It wasn't uncommon for the old greens to roll less than 8' for extended periods of time in the summer.

The two pictures below are areas on 5 & 8 that had very little grass on them this time last year. It's great to see progression.

Look at that view

That would be a great picture without the spray hawk. For a bunch of guys that hate spraying, we sure spray a lot. The guys are good about it though. Would rather just go out and knock it out. Possibly the worst job on the course when it's hot out. Those spray pants are the hottest thing you could ever imagine wearing. We have a really solid crew on the course.

We were having issues with the sprayer this morning. The mix wasn't very happy coming out of the sprayer - kept getting clogged. The results....little streaky spray.

Dry and new equipment

There are some lines in the rough from the exhaust of one of the new tractors we just got in. The hot exhaust is angled out of the tractor onto the turf, burning the grass. You don't even know it's happening until a few days later when you start to see the tip burn. I'm currently working with the vendor to fix this issue. Shouldn't be a huge deal. The Bermuda will grow out of it in a week or so.

On another note....it's the driest stretch I've seen out here in 3 years. Really dry. Just look under the trees where we don't have irrigation. Irrigation coverage sticks out like a sore thumb now! I can't wait to shut this system down for the year. All the guys are sick of working on leaks and troubleshooting electrical and wiring issues. I know I'm ready to throw that wire tracer in the pond. We have been nonstop on irrigation work the last 2 weeks. Come on cool weather!

Greens and healing

The greens look ok....just ok.....nothing real great yet. We are a week from aeration and they are a little slow to recover. This crazy heat and humidity isn't helping, but more then anything, we need some fresh rainfall. The greens are loaded with sodium, and even though we flush them once in a while, you're still flushing with crappy water. The sodium really stunts the grass back this time of year with the shallow roots.

We are spraying another fungicide and some foliar fertilizer in the morning to try and get them kicking.

They are still going to be awesome this fall, just need a little rain. I'm going to start working them down tomorrow and if the weather cooperates, they should be rolling better by next week.

Irrigation

It's the driest I've seen it out here in a couple years. You can see the spots we have irrigation (working irrigation) and the spots we don't. The irrigation system is the most important capital asset we have. Not only do we use it to keep the grass alive, but we also use it to water in fertilizers and pesticides.