A great spring for cool season grass
The temperatures remain cooler than normal so our bentgrass has been loving life. Roots are growing, the texture has stayed fine and green speeds have been optimal. We will be pulling tiny cores out of the back nine Sabot greens on Monday to continue help them smooth out and speed up. Right now they are about 1 foot behind the front nine in speed but that is mainly because the front nine is just too darn good to slow down.
The bermuda is trying its best to green up but it still isn't moving anywhere very quickly without a bigger jump in temperatures. 11 tees are shaded both in the morning and in the afternoon so they remain thin this cool spring. Next week we will lay down one more truck of bermudagrass in some thin areas around both courses and then one truck of tall fescue in notoriously shaded spots like behind 3 Manakin and 5 Manakin greens.
An additional post emergent application for Poa control has been made over the past two weeks in all the rough. This winter was miserable for Poa prevention as the rains kept coming, degrading our pre-emergent applications going in to March. Applying additional herbicide when the bermuda is trying to green up (March) is a tough ask, especially through wet and shaded areas like the back nine Sabot fairways. We'll try a few different tricks this fall and winter but Poa will most likely remain our toughest weed to fight, just like it is on both Antarctica and near the equator on Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Next week we are scheduled to solid tine aerate the fairways and tees on the Manakin. Manakin will be closed on Tuesday. The same tines that were used on the Sabot will be used for Manakin so impact to play is minimal. Also lucky for you the golfer, is that McGill compost can only get us 4 out of the 15 loads of compost that we really wanted for next week. So instead of going wall to wall with this beautiful material we will just be doing our most demanding spots through the trees and along wood lines in the roughs. McGill is still recovering their inventory from Covid when schools and restaurants were shut down as most of that waste is used in their compost. The compost helps build on top of our clay soil, keeping microbes active and allowing us to use water and nutrients much more efficiently. We may get some more in the fall but we'll have to survive through the season with other synthetic fertilizers.
Enjoy the cool spring weather!