Seeding weather is upon us

 

We are happily impressed by what the bluegrass is doing out on the back nine of the Sabot. It has come up pretty consistently thus far. Being able to control the water over the last two weeks along with some heat has helped things along. The first cut will happen early next week as we now taper the water back off.

The ryegrass on the range tee is mowing out nicely already. It will continue to fill in over the next few weeks. For now we will stay on the hitting mats from Monday through Thursday and then go to the bermuda Friday through Saturday. The rye should be ready to hit off of by the end of the month.

The remaining benches have arrived and are now out on all the par 3's on both courses.

Our next set of seeding projects moved into the native areas. Here around the new tees on 18 we sprayed out and scalped down the warm season weeds and sowed in more fine fescue. 

Over on the Manakin we are experimenting with thinning out the current tall fescue native areas and incorporating more fine fescue. The fine fescue grows very slowly and in the summer can provide great contrast with its tan seed heads against the green bermuda. The current tall fescue just grows constantly and becomes very thick through the season, making it hard to find balls and not providing much visually.

The area in between 7 and 12 was scalped down and then interseeded with fine fescue. We will keep it wet and see what happens here before we spend more time and money on the rest of the native areas here on the Manakin.

The bermuda is starting to slow down in growth, more because of day length than temperatures. We make a variety of dormancy preparations and the first being a fungicide application for a disease called spring dead spot. Fungicide is applied and watered in twice in the fall to prevent this spring disease from taking out bermuda through the winter. Next week we will be making potassium applications to the fairways to provide a little extra strength going into the cooler months of the year. 

The rain on Saturday will help our seed some more but its not great for golf, although it looks like we have a few more weeks of above average temps that should encourage plenty of fall golf this month!