Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  October is almost here and the fall temperatures have not disappointed over the past week or so. Bermuda growth is slowing down thanks to the low night time temps as well as the dry soil. The dryness will be addressed this weekend but the temps will stay low. We will be back to alternating days on the grass and mats on the Driving Range in October. We may run out of bermuda to hit off of sooner than later and then we will be on the mats until spring. 20,000 square feet of turf type tall fescue sod went down on the right of 3 Manakin this past Monday and Tuesday. The new sod has replaced the old wood chip bed and gives the hole a much nicer and wider look. The sod should root in over the next two weeks and then will be mowed at about 2.5". Visage has been set up to keep carts out of this area and please take the nearest point of relief with your ball if you happen to end up on this side. The newly installed irrigation is working nicely to keep the sod moist. This entire area can ...

  These cool nights are a welcomed change! Now all we need is some rain and for the oak trees to maybe hold their acorns until after the bermuda goes dormant! Our final core aeration for the year on greens is now complete. We again just used 1/4" coring tines on the Manakin greens but at 1.5" spacing which is as close as you can get. Even with the smaller tines we were still able to brush in 40 tons of sand into these greens. The smaller tine offers less disruption and the aerator itself pulls less on the upper layer, allowing the green to recover faster. The small cores are easily blown off to the side and picked up. All the greens were topdresssed with kiln dried sand which brushes nicely into the holes. We have made major headway over the past few years with our aerations. The greens play firmer, they respond to stress correctly and their leaf texture has improved greatly. Continuing to manage the top 2 inches diligently will keep these greens working nicely for years to c...

It is hard to ask for a better week of weather than this! An inch of rain recharged the soil a bit this past Sunday and the humidity finally dropped out Tuesday night. We have been letting things dry down all week as we work through both the Ladies Club Championship as well as Men's Member Member. The new greens on the Sabot have gotten their first taste of summer in Richmond. They have recovered from aeration nicely and the thinner areas on the most pocketed greens have turned around quickly. The ultimate challenge with this brand new turf is figuring out exactly how to balance growth rate with mowing height, topdressing frequency and growth regulator use. This denser turf is probably going to take more topdressing during this first year or two to be able to get the heights down to where we can keep putting speeds up. Overall these greens look amazing and we'll be happy to have all 18 holes completed by mid-November. The Manakin greens have been outstanding this year. It has o...

  Fall certainly doesn't happen over night! We haven't seen many low temperatures below 70 this week so the bermuda is still growing happily, despite the lower and lower sun angle. A few scattered showers came through on Wednesday to give the irrigation system a break and overall cooler temps are on the way. The new greens on the Sabot are figuring out how to grow in the armpit of American as opposed to a wide open farm field. Mechanical damage around the edges from our mowers going over small imperfections in the sod is easy to see on some of our most shaded and air restricted holes like 5 and 9. We poked some tiny holes and added seed and some topdressing to these areas. Continued aerations and rollings will help smooth these greens out as they evolve into their new growth chambers. More fun on the front nine of the Sabot as the starter controls for our pump for 5 stream lasted all of two days before setting itself on fire. Not sure what happened yet but we are back to only r...

Google has eliminated our automatic update to your email box. Look to the left here and subscribe again if you'd like to be notified about each blog update! Of course the weather for August can be summarized with all different types of weather. Hot, hotter, cool, humid, not bad, breezy, dry, wet, all of it! It's been so humid through the weekend that we are getting the dew to set back up on the turf even after we mow it. The bentgrass is ready for Fall as it has seen enough of these humid, shady mornings. The new greens have survived the summer and will continue to acclimate to these terrible environments we have tossed them in. The new bents love sun so we will continue to work this winter on supplying that need. Overall both courses have played very nicely through another tough summer. Our staff continues to work hard each and every day to provide an excellent product! We have finally gotten 5 Sabot stream running this week! After putting in new larger wire ourselves for the ...