We can't win every season I suppose

We finally had a day where Boomer had to dig himself a cool spot outside the house this past weekend. The bermuda has almost clawed its way back into the nice color it had 3 weeks ago. Unfortunately, an unprecedented blast of cold air is coming our way right now that is more than likely going to set another frost on the ground. This of course does not do our bermuda any favors while our greens and cool season fairways will continue to thrive.

Without even marginal growing weather for bermuda, recovery weather is a ways off. We continue to work through questions about what the problem was around the greens on the Manakin. What it all boils down to, as we have tried to discuss in previous blogs, is an unfair sensitivity of the sprigs to the pre-emergent herbicide applied in February. A different sprayer was used around the greens and believe me when I say we have been through all the different options to figure the difference in application and everything has spec'ed out properly. The margin of error between sod surviving in these areas and sprigs being severely set back was way too tight and nothing anyone has seen before.

What we also won't know is that if we had a normal spring with a few 90 degree days tossed in like last year, would we be looking at the same result. Oh well, moving forward! There is still some green in a lot of these areas and they still have a dormant look to them as opposed to deceased. We need some temperatures! On Wednesday we got 1,000 square feet of sod from the sod farm to replace a few areas around 8 and 9 green. This allowed us to gauge our depth of the sod cutter. On at least the next two Monday's and Tuesday's we will be laying down 10,000 square feet of sod in our worst areas like around 12 green and 2 green. As you can see, the sod from the farm isn't exactly glowing. We will slowly outsmart mother nature this spring but it is going to take a few more weeks. We will be using up a few left over gallons of green paint tomorrow to help warm some areas up and there may be a few areas with a blanket on them to get through the weekend.

Over on the course that is enjoying spring we again lightly verticut and topdressed the greens as well as heavily topdressed the approaches.

The sand brushes right into a dry canopy and a dry mowing behind really tightens up the surface.

Joe has been shaving down the lower area between the pond and the green on 4 this year. He also gave it a nice topdressing without flipping any machinery into the pond on Monday.

The divot crew made it out onto the Manakin this week. They went from tee to green and also looked for depressions left over from the sprigging machine. These areas were leveled off and once the Latitude starts moving things should smooth out nicely.

Bunkers are what we continue to have to neglect. The faces of the Manakin hadn't been mowed in 3 weeks. Thursday was the first day we were able to rake the Manakin bunkers, Friday will be the first day for the Sabot.

The golf shop has been doing an excellent job disinfecting the carts after each round. The process continues to evolve and we are confident that a cart outfitted with divot bottles and a bunker rake is safely feasible. The bottles, rake and cart will all be cleaned and disinfected after each round. Please feel free to use the divot mix if your divot is not replaceable and rake your tracks in the bunkers. Every little bit will help keep the courses in a playable condition.

We have about 3500 annuals under turf blankets and waiting to go in the ground next week. Come on weather!