Dog Days of Summer!

The heat is here!  Yesterday we reached 94 and today about the same, along with the next 6 days.  These are the times a Golf Course Superintendent dreads.  In our line of work we always like to have the ability to control the situation but when temperatures reach these marks for an extended time there is only so much we can do.  Stretches like this push turf grass to the brink of mortality.  Adjustments in practices are put in place and we have to baby the turf especially turf mowed as short as green height.  We've raised mowing heights, changed rollers on the mowers, and will limit any other stress to the greens over the next 10-14 days.  During this time we will also closely monitor moisture levels in the soil, too much moisture can create issues and obviously too little moisture as well.  Too little means things will dry up fast and too much can act as a pot of water boiling the roots of the turf.  Stay cool and drink lots of water over this stretch of heat!

Other than the heat we're doing quite well.  Things have dried up from our cool, wet spring requiring a great deal of irrigation use.  Since June 16th we've only received .2" of rain.  Areas where we don't have irrigation are pretty much done till we get cooler weather and some rain.  These areas of bluegrass basically go dormant to protect itself through the heat and lack of water.  Fairways have become a bit choppy as the soil below has bound up and the sodium buildup in our soils only compounds that soil tightening.  Still though the irrigation in these areas aid in keeping the turfgrass viable. 

We'll be increasing our spraying frequencies during these high stress times.  Obviously each fungicide has a time frame where it should protect but when climatic conditions provide for high disease stress it's always smart to shorten those frequencies to protect ourselves. 

A few projects that we've taken on over the last few weeks are as follows:

Removal of the cattails on 14:

Cattails were removed for a sightline purposes.  The cattails when full grown were hiding the front part of the green as well as the bunker to the rightside of the green.  At times balls would land in front of the green but one couldn't tell whether the ball was above the hazard line or below.  Sight and playability were the reasoning behind this removal.  Additional cattails will be added along the rightside of the pond but not let to encroach the front of the green or bunker.

Installation of some test bunkers to see playability and maintenance necessities with some different sands.  Recently we installed new sand in the front righthand greenside bunker on 17:

Bunker selected to add some new sand to test

Removing all the old sand from the bunker

This is how much the grass had grown into the bunker.  We went through and reclaimed the edge of the bunker.

The drain tile in the bunker after getting the sand removed.  Completely damaged and shallow.

Adding some clay around the edge of the bunker to shallow the edges and reduce the amount of sand needed to hide the back edges.

New draintile installed

Installation of new sand.  Sand is named "Steepface" specifically designed to hold place on steepface bunkers.  Seeing if this sand will help reduce labor and sand contamination from washing out every rain.

Smoothing out and packing down the new sand in the bunker.

Bunker is complete.  Try it out!