Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  The bottom has dropped out of the night time temperatures. We even hit 39 degrees the other day! The cold temperatures have slammed the bermuda to a halt and allowed our bentgrass to take a nice breath of fresh air. Today is the one year anniversary of the Manakin opening with Latitude 36 bermudagrass! We were very lucky with the weather last year. An extended hot and dry period led us to perfect conditions come September 24th. Looking at the weather last year, it was 100 degrees on October 3rd! Now on September 24th the bermuda has slowed down significantly. The Manakin will receive no paint this year, we will be going all natural, all winter. The paint certainly did not help us green up any faster this spring and bottom line, it is expensive! We are going to continue encouraging our bluegrass experiment on the Sabot. The bluegrass gives great natural color and helps suck up moisture on the lower area that the Sabot plays through. While the bluegrass isn't showing its face as mu...

  Shorter days and cooler night time temperatures are here. The bermuda is going to slow down and we are hoping the bluegrass on the Sabot keeps popping its head back up. Hurricane Sally is helping with that right now. We will wait about another month before any more bluegrass seed hits the ground. We are lucky to get some cooler temperatures this early. Last year it was still hot as the Manakin was finishing growing in, next week will mark its one year anniversary. All of our 6 new fans are down and back at the shop for the season. They unplug and unbolt from their pedestal and then a top fits nicely on to the control box so that a mower can have an easier time mowing around the area. The fans were life savers this season, moving cooler air across the bentgrass when it was hot and wet. We have four more fans in the budget next year for 2 Manakin, 6, 7, and 14 Sabot. Installed cost of each fan is about $10,000. We continue to dial in the irrigation renovation bid process for the Sa...

  What a miserable year for cool season turf. The Sabot greens continue to heal from aeration (and the summer in general) and the Manakin greens are just waiting on some lower humidity to start shining. We put some gypsum as well as some humic acid on the greens this week in order to help with microbial activity and make all possible nutrients available for our bentgrass. Our bluegrass seed for the year is on site. That is 20 bags or $5,000 worth of seed. We still have some hope that our bluegrass from last year is going to fill back in, but this seed will speed up the process. In the past we were spending over $20k a year in ryegrass overseeding. Seeding date is TBD but it will be sometime in October/early November. If the bluegrass really does fill back in quickly by Christmas, maybe they will put Joe's face on the bag for next year. We also got another load of stone pavers in this week. This will keep us busy in the colder months, finishing up some curbing and getting the area o...

  Mother Nature tried to slow us down a bit early in the week as we started aeration on the Sabot. We were able to pull 3/8" cores out of 14 greens on Monday before the clouds opened up. The remaining greens were completed Tuesday. The plugs were simply blown off the greens surface as to not scarify any turf during the cleanup process. This muck is what we are going after. Many of the greens, especially down the center have some very anaerobic medium in the top layer. Pulling cores out allows us to introduce air into the system and the sand helps dilute the percentage of built up muck. About 20 tons of sand went out on the greens which is actually a lighter rate. With the heat still on us, the last thing we want to do is bury the greens with sand and then brush the turf right off of them. We have enough sand down to help dilute the muck and help the holes fill in. By Thursday you could really see the bentgrass enjoying the breath of fresh air. We have been applying a wide array of...