Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  On our 500 acre property we have about 15 acres that can be classified as cool season. Every other plant loves the heat, especially when there is moisture in the ground. The landscaping around the club has come on strong over the past few weeks. The butterflies are moving around and any bees that you see are busy working to collect pollen, they don't have time to bother you! We are still a month away from the one year anniversary of re-opening the Manakin. The decision to move to bermudagrass and away from cool season could not have come at a better time. The consistency of the Latitude is amazing through the heat of the summer. There is no hand watering, no fungicides and no worry of too much stress when the heat is on. We continue to nurse our bentgrass greens through the latter part of the summer. With a lot of our seasonal staff headed "back to school" we have the triplex back in action on the greens. The triplex uses one, maybe two people, while walk mowing necessi...

  This past weekend we saw another 5 inches of rain come down. We again were very lucky to only see this amount as our friends to the south and east got crushed with over 10 inches. The new bunkers on the Sabot hold up perfectly! Some drier weather today has helped us get caught up with mowing. We got a fresh load of dry topdressing sand in on Monday. A light dusting of sand went down on the greens. It's August and with over 10 inches of rain this month we need all the help we can get when it comes to firming up the greens. Reminder - Sabot greens with be core aerated on the 31st and we will have both courses closed that Monday. Sabot will be closed on the Tuesday the 1st as well to finish up the process. This past Wednesday we spent some time at Bayville GC looking at their bentgrass nursery. 12 different bentgrasses were planted here and all showed serious improvements over our current variety on the Sabot, L93. Density, leaf blade size, traffic, disease and drought tolerance on ...

  We have gotten a few comments about seeing a major difference between greens with fans on them vs greens without fans. This isn't rocket science, just plain science! Cool season turf needs air movement and moderate soil temperatures. When the microwave weather engages, hot, moist conditions will cause weaker plants to thin out. We are rotating a buffalo blower between 6 and 7 Sabot this week and will more than likely have a greens fan here next year. Why does the turf on the same green react so differently in the summer? How can we have a perfect patch of bentgrass next to a thin patch? All bentgrasses are bred from a certain set of parents. Over time the turf segregates out and expresses it unique genetics. Just like in the winter when some plants turn purple vs green, in the summer some patches can't handle the heat and humidity as well as others. The good part is that the perfect patches are now bred together and newer bentgrasses are significantly more strong and consiste...

Our hottest July on record was capped off with a pretty successful Men's Member Guest. While we did not push the greens to gather speed as we would normally have, they still rolled true. The greens without fans on them have certainly showed some stress over the last few weeks but we turn into a bit of recovery mode this week. The mowing heights have been raised slightly and before the heavy rains on Tuesday we applied some topdressing and a variety of nutrients to help the greens perk up. We will keep the rollers in the shed this week as more rain continues to be in the forecast. As with most of nature, too much of a good thing is not great! This was our week to make our own mess on the Manakin. Vertical mowing this bermudagrass was long over due. The verticutter pulls up and slices through plenty of thatch that the bermuda has produced over the past year.  The clean up for this process is a mighty effort which is why we had the Manakin closed for 3 days this week. Unfortunate...