Spring is here?
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Here is our final picture allowing us to complain about spring weather. From the Syngenta website: "A growing degree day is a measurement tool for tracking the accumulation of heat units, which are necessary for monitoring the growth and development of plants and insects. GDDs increase as the temperature increases throughout the spring and summer seasons." See those 1's and 0's up there? That means not much movement in the turf, especially warm season grasses.  Thanks to those low temperatures (we actually hit 31 on Saturday and Sunday) we endured two frosty mornings over the weekend. The frosts send the bermuda backwards, especially in the rough. Thankfully we should be finished with any late season frosts and things should FINALLY start moving.  As we have been alluding to, sod work started this week on areas that were not going to recover in an acceptable amount of time. 20,000 square feet of turf on 12, 13 and 14 Manakin were stripped up and re-sodded early in the week.  The sod from the sod farm in Charles City is by no means ahead of schedule either. With the upcoming temperatures however, it should root in and be playable in a week to 10 days. For now, please take the nearest point of relief out of these areas.  The paint and some fertilizer helped keep the frost off our slow areas. This area on 10 has come a long way despite the temperatures. These areas will be fertilized again Friday and should continue to fill in. We will be laying 10,000 more square feet more of sod early next week. After that, we hope to push everything else along and form up a respectable golf course by the end of the month.  Your million dollar grass is still down there, we just need mother nature to hold up her end of the bargain!  |
The major benefit of the slow spring is root growth in cool season grasses. When roots from bentgrass mowed at just over a tenth of an inch are sticking out of the cup cutter 10 inches down, that is a very good sign that our cultural practices are working!
The Sabot bluegrass also continues to thrive. Only time will tell us how it fairs in the summer and into the fall but all signs so far are pointing towards a healthy, playable two grass system.
Our full time staff of 25 continues to grind away on daily routine jobs. Bunker raking has faded off the daily job sheet Monday through Thursday. Friday, Saturday and Sunday we get the bunker rakes back out and try to provide as complete a course set up as possible. Entering into Phase 1 is exciting and we can only hope things progress in a positive direction!