Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

Last Friday we caught two nasty thunderstorms that dropped over 2 inches of rain. The second one even included a 5 minute long hail storm! The cold hail mixed with hot humid air producing fog so thick you could barely see where you were going. The weather continues to be wild this year! 3 more storms have graced the property this week keeping things saturated and growing. The bluegrass on the Sabot is loving the weather. Today we applied a wetting agent and a growth regulator in order to help the water keep moving and limit some growth of the bluegrass. Sabot greens were topdressed lightly on Monday to help combat the bentgrass from getting puffy in the humid, wet weather. 18,000 square feet of Latitude sod went down again early this week. We cut a new drainage ditch in front of 18 approach where the sprigs stayed too wet over the winter here. The trench was filled with sand and then sodded over. We have one more truck of sod scheduled for this coming Monday. It is crazy to say that at...

Our sod work on the Manakin is nearing the end. Our summer staff continues to filter in so that has made sodding and caring for the course slightly more manageable. This coming Monday and Tuesday we will lay two more trucks of sod. They may stretch across everything we need considering how fast things are growing now. Here is how far the new sod from last week has rooted down. These areas are coming back into play quickly. The Latitude continues to come into summer form. With golfers scared of the rain this week we were able to get a circle cut down on a few fairways. The mowers follow each other in a circle, cutting across the normal direction of cut. This smooths out and tightens up the bermuda nicely. We are also demoing a new fairway mower. This mower has larger reels built for mowing bermuda (not bentgrass) and gives a much more consistent cut. With increased mowing comes increased chances of equipment problems. Hydraulic leaks are never fun nor are they predictable. We are just l...

One year ago today the Manakin had just started being prepped for the new sprigs. Still one month away from starting to sprig. The weather this spring was not helpful but we are finally starting to have to mow pretty much constantly on the latitude. The thin areas are showing more signs of life and the edges continue to shrink every day. As we have been echoing, bermuda needs it hot and humid to thrive. We had two heavy frosts only 30 days ago. The Manakin is built to excel through the summer and that it will do. Sod work will continue on Monday and Tuesday next week and the following week.  99% of Manakin is really starting to get good. Does anyone remember the concern about winter time divoting now?? The new sod was again topdressed and brushed this week just before the downpours on Thursday. Our new fans are mounted and ready for service. We are only waiting on Dominion power to finish their power hook up back at the new electric panels. Running and activating this power has bee...

The week started off with just over 100 tons of sand being spread around the greens on the Manakin. The sand will continue to help the latitude smooth out and fill in and it will let us continue to mow the roll off areas tight. A few of the bumpier fairways were also topdressed to help smooth out the surface. Our new fairway brush makes quick work of the topdressing sand.  We also made a big push this week with sod work. 30,000 square feet of turf was stripped up and replaced with new latitude sod. Over the past few weeks it has become painfully apparent that the majority of these areas that didn't wake up after the winter were not going to come to life. The cool spring may have aided with missing the "wake up" window but we have also had discussions with the pre-emergent manufacturer and expressed our discontent with what we have been dealt. The company has agreed to reimburse us for a good amount of sod that has been going down. After 3 trucks of sod this week, we look ...

The bentgrass is also actually trying to wake up as well. The Sabot greens were verticut, topdressed, brushed and mowed once again on Tuesday. Remember, the Manakin greens will be Dryjected and aerated with small 1/4" coring tines on Wednesday the 3rd which is next week. Once this process is complete we will not be aerating the Manakin with anything significant until late in October. Our injury areas on the Manakin are starting to move a little. More sod will be going down early next week.  The rest of the Latitude is really starting to grow. Green surrounds and some fairway landing areas are scheduled to be topdressed next week as well. We are getting our answer about how the bluegrass and vamont will transition in the spring pretty quickly. You are looking at over 50% vamont bermuda coverage already in the bluegrass fairways, tees and approaches. The spring transition will be seamless, it is the fall transition that will be the most interesting. After an intense season of irriga...

Here is your spring 2020 summary picture. Cool season grass enjoyed itself and the bermuda did nothing. This will change shortly. This May has been cooler than last years April. We went from being a month ahead in March to being a month behind in May! 22 more pallets of Latitude sod was laid on Monday this week. This will be the last installment of sod for a few weeks while we wait for Mother Nature to do her part to help fill in many of these other dormant areas on the Manakin. Our season long slow release fertilizer was applied this week on the Manakin. This application will be the base for our growing season. We can add on where necessary as the year moves on. The Sabot will receive the same application in a week or two. We are thankful to bring on 6 more people in June to help us keep up with a normal mowing schedule as things warm up. Gypsum was applied to all the new tees on the Manakin this week. The tees were also solid tine aerated and will be sand topdressed next week. We kno...

Here is our final picture allowing us to complain about spring weather. From the Syngenta website: "A growing degree day is a measurement tool for tracking the accumulation of heat units, which are necessary for monitoring the growth and development of plants and insects. GDDs increase as the temperature increases throughout the spring and summer seasons." See those 1's and 0's up there? That means not much movement in the turf, especially warm season grasses. Thanks to those low temperatures (we actually hit 31 on Saturday and Sunday) we endured two frosty mornings over the weekend. The frosts send the bermuda backwards, especially in the rough. Thankfully we should be finished with any late season frosts and things should FINALLY start moving. As we have been alluding to, sod work started this week on areas that were not going to recover in an acceptable amount of time. 20,000 square feet of turf on 12, 13 and 14 Manakin were stripped up and re-sodded early in the w...