Top of the Monday!

A bit wet out there this morning!  Last night we were on the end of .40" of rain, which is light compared to some areas.  Now lets just hope that it is a few days or a week before it rains again.  Spring is a good time to push roots, when we receive a good deal of rain the roots have no need to push deeper to find water.  So here in the next month or two it is somewhat of a "training" period for the turfgrass.  We train the turf by letting it stress out slightly making it push its roots deeper into the soil.  This makes the turf a bit more tolerant in the summer as it can find water a bit deeper with longer roots and help us not needing to water as much making for better playing surfaces.  This morning soil temperatures measured at 46 degrees, that is just in the window for root growth.  Root growth begins when soil temperatures reach 45 degrees and growth ceases at 70 degrees.  Long range forecasts show that those should slightly climb but not all much.  Keys will be the night time temps and how low they drop, which some nights will be dropping into the 30's.  Until the temps get climbing we'll have very minimal and uneven growth on our greens due to the compilation of turfgrasses we have.  This week we plan on spraying the greens with a foliar fertilizer that can help bring turfgrass out of dormancy even when the weather is saying the time isn't right.  Here are a few photos from this morning:

9 Green.  This photo illustrates the compilation of turfgrass we have on our greens.  All the different, spotty colors are patches of different turf.  The different turf grows at different rates and temperatures making it always difficult to find consistency.  This is a major reason for the Phase II of the greens, to get a consistent strain of turf through a green but most of all the whole golf course.

This is the soil temperature at about 7:45am on 4/4/2011.  Like I stated earlier soil temps need to be about 45 degrees before activity begins.  Consistent activity is still a bit off as the long range forecast shows dipping into the 30's at nights.  Strong turf growth will develop once we get a consistent reading about 55 degrees.