Moisture and heat remain high!

The bermuda really jumped out of the ground this past weekend thanks to yet another mid afternoon thunderstorm on Saturday that dropped 1.3 inches of rain in short time. The Latitude on the Manakin is just starting to get a little puffy and scalpy so our scheduled verticutting and topdressing for next week is right on time. The Manakin will remain closed Monday through Wednesday next week as we work to get all 50 acres of short grass verticut and then topdressed with sand. This process will set the stage for the rest of the growing season and enable us to keep the bermuda looking and playing great.

This past Monday saw a few more projects get knocked off the list. Joe cut 3 new drainage lines in on 11 blue Manakin.

The tees on the Manakin are internally drained but they are supposed to have 4-6 inches of sand on top. This tee on 11 just has two inches of sand on top of the red clay. The water can infiltrate the sand but then it just sits on top of that clay and doesn't go anywhere. We basically bypassed everything and just cut three separate lines that drain all the way in to the native area on the left.

We'll see if this tee can get its act together now before we look at removing that tree behind 10 green which casts shade here until about 11am.

The Sabot crew dropped the dead oak left of #1 Monday.

With care taken to miss the cartpath!

Efrain and Juan put in some new paver curbs between the Manakin putter and #1 tee. This whole path could probably be twice as wide but oh well!

The nursery left of 7 tees Sabot has been prepped and readied to receive sprigs from the Manakin fairway verticutting next week. 

Last week we posted about going after the goosegrass on the Sabot around most of the front nine greens and on 14 and 16 fairway. This application has turned out to be a little too aggressive unfortunately! The reason we have goosegrass break through around the greens is because we have to be careful with certain pre-emerge herbicides that can hurt the bentgrass if they are tracked or washed onto the green. But then we are in this position trying to take goose out with post emerge herbicides. With the bermuda growing and adequate moisture in the ground we thought this application around some greens would be ok but that has not turned out to be the case. Some of the herbicide has washed into the green and been tracked across the bentgrass, the worst of it being on 3 and 16 greens. We are nursing these areas with every product possible to keep the turf alive but the weather isn't exactly on our side at the moment. We keep telling ourselves it's just grass but having everything else is such good shape and then having this occur from pushing a little too hard is not fun. Hopefully most of it recovers otherwise we will patch things up as quickly as possible and move on!