Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

After a wet weekend this week started off with a few nice days. The verticutter took a trip around the Sabot greens on Monday, removing a lot of lateral growth and further helping dial in the texture of the turf. A little amount of topdressing went down after the verticutter and was brushed in with our pull behind brush. The greens were mowed in a different direction than the verticutter went and we used the out front brushes to get a nice clean cut. We will continue to work on the texture of the bentgrass greens this fall which helps provide a smoother more consistent roll. We jumped in to a few projects on Monday, the first one being the sink hole on 13 fairway Sabot. There was a spot in the fairway that continued to sink all year. The pipe that you see in the foreground is the culprit. The entire bottom of that piece was rotted out. Luckily each other side of the pipe looked ok, so we were able to just cut the bad part out. A new piece of plastic drain pip...

A few more frosts have really turned the Manakin off color the past two weeks. The only green color that is left is from a pigment spray last Monday. As we have discussed here, we were trying to use pigments, which are applied at a light rate (22 oz per acre) to maintain some color until December. The cold temps and rain have degraded that pigment but we are still going to wait until the first week of December to get our colorant out for the winter. The colorant is applied at around 4 gallons per acre and will hopefully provide a much deeper color for two months after applied. We are trying to be patient so that the colorant lasts through the winter and maybe just needs one more touch up in February. The Sabot is producing its green color naturally with the bluegrass seed. We applied some fertilizer through the sprayer this week to help keep the bluegrass moving and darken up the color a bit. We also applied some wetting agent to help keep rain water moving through the profil...

The fall colors are out and these oak leaves are not going anywhere fast! Our biggest challenge now is managing maintenance traffic on dormant bermudagrass in order to keep the turf clean of leaves and debris. Again, golfer cart traffic is now restricted to the path on the Manakin. Sabot will allow carts on the turf so long as it stays dry. If you are able to walk the Manakin, give it a try. Walking the Manakin is a totally different experience than riding in a cart. Some pretty big flakes came down after the rain on Tuesday. The golf courses were covered with snow for about an hour before the snow melted back down. The cold air that came behind this system was pretty impressive. A really hard frost came down Wednesday night and into Thursday morning. Any kind of natural green that was in the bermuda will not be there by the weekend. With the turf finished growing we continue to focus on out lying projects. The guys are working their way through the pine straw beds...

The zebra stripes are out and more are on the way after this weekend. With lows in the 20's most of next week we will have to restrict cart traffic off the new bermudagrass on the Manakin after Monday. We will have both courses open at noon on Monday in case you want to squeeze in one more round in the 60's. The weather looks to be mild later on in the month but with consistent frosts. We can already see marginal injury on some of the Latitude from cart traffic in the early morning. Taking the precaution of restricting cart traffic for the winter will help ensure our product is ready to go for the spring. With the Driving Range on the mats for the rest of the season we opted to cover the lower tee. This will help the bluegrass seed fill in some more and maybe let the bermuda finish recovering from divots. The bluegrass on the Sabot continues to grow and fill in. We should have some nice color over here for the winter. So long as it is dry and we are not seeing any ...

We put the first mowing on the new bluegrass seed on the Sabot this week. The rain has helped move the turf along and it really is further along than expected. It will be very interesting to see what it looks like after a few frosts shuts the bermuda down. Either way we should have a really nice surface in early spring and a smooth transition next fall. One surprising thing we have discovered in the bluemuda conversion is how much ryegrass was still hanging out from last years overseed. The dark blotches of grass you can see out on the Sabot are rye that survived the summer. It was basically invisible up to two weeks ago. We will be able to spray out most of it in the spring and it will continue to thin out and die next summer. The lime green tufts of grass on the Manakin are Poa annua. The young bermudgrass here really limits our pre-emergent weed control options for the fall. What is not limited though are the herbicides we can use to take this poa out once the Latitude ...

There is a pretty good lime green hue from the bluegrass seed working on the Sabot. We were able to get our starter fertilizer down before the rains on Monday night. We know it has been soft over here but that moisture has helped our seed crop explode. The mild weather is helping so we will continue pushing this seed along into the winter. The bluegrass establishment is much slower than the rye but once it finishes filling in in the spring it will be here to stay. We hope to put carts back on the fairways Friday but be ready for more rain this weekend. With bermudagrass growth all but over with we are starting to check off some smaller sod projects before the frost really turns things off. This mulch area on 11 tee Sabot was sodded over to better hold up to rain events and give a nicer walk up to the tee. Check out the color of that Latitude sod from our nursery compared to the Vamont! On the Manakin the staff has been working through the bunkers again and fine tuning sa...

Almost 2 inches of rain soaked us down on Wednesday. This was the first time it had rained more than .3" in well over two months. As soil temperatures continue to drop, ensuring we have enough moisture in the profile is important so this rain was extremely beneficial. It is very doubtful that you will see the lakes that low ever again. The Sabot bunkers slowly drained out over night but that still leaves plenty of silt behind. The silt is cleaned out and the bunker is raked in what takes almost of full day of work. It will be very exciting if we are able to start renovating these bunkers next year. The rain was also very good timing for the bluegrass seedlings in the Sabot fairways. They continue to pop and grow. We have been keeping cart traffic in the rough this week and will continue to do so through the weekend in order to protect the seedlings. Please keep your cart between the cartpath and the fairway, don't get trapped on the opposite side. It is eas...