Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

July did not disappoint the bermudagrass. As the weather heated up the bermuda took charge and started loving life. Even with only an inch and a half of rain this month, the bermuda has excelled. We had 26 days with a high above 90 and only 3 days where the low dropped below 70 (68 and 2 69 degree nights). This is sweltering. The newly installed fans (and the old ones) have been performing beautifully in the heat. Bentgrass does not enjoy 90 degree soil temperatures so the fans are there keeping the temperatures down. It is easy to see a difference in quality of turf on greens with a fan versus greens that do not have a fan. Even here on #2, the front of the green is just over 100 feet away from the fan and it is not doing as well as the rest of the green. This is why the fans are positioned so close to the greens, for maximum cooling impact. Luckily in August we drop a degree per week for average temperature, but we still have a long way to go! Member Guest in the dead of summer means...

The bermuda is loving the heat, the bentgrass greens are in survival mode and the bluegrass doesn't know which way to go. Overall we are hanging in there. We have had only one day in July with a high below 90 (88) and we did touch 100 on Tuesday this past week. The bentgrass on the tees on 3 Sabot have been laid to rest. This pocketed area just can not produce a bentgrass playing surface that can hold up to foot traffic.  3 white/blue, the black tee and the right white tee on 5 have been sodded with Zeon zoysia. The zoysia will hold up well to foot traffic as well as the humidity in these areas. We will work the height down on the sod over the next few weeks and have them back in play shortly. A number of the smaller tees on the Sabot have the irrigation head right in the middle of the tee. This small head takes up a good amount of usable teeing ground. We took the time to move the sprinkler off to the side of the tee on 3 black before the new sod went down. We continue to work our...

We continue to work our the texture and firmness around the greens on the Manakin. With the heat here to stay, we moved the verticutter that we normally use on the greens over to the latitude. At the same working depth, the verticutter churned out plenty of material. After the verticutter we followed up with another topdressing. The upper profile in the greens surrounds is starting to firm up nicely. We want the ball moving around these greens and for the lie to be predictable. We are still trying to get the new tees on the Manakin to soften up a little. We aerated them again this week and applied more gypsum, granulated compost and sand. The idea is to build up another growing matter layer so that you can get your tee in the ground and so we can get the tee marker in the ground. A few emails have come through about the "bees" in the bunkers. These insects are actually horse guard wasps and they will not sting you. They are beneficial wasps that hunt down horse flies which is...

The view and focus of work was slightly different a year ago when we starting sprigging on July 8th. One year, 120,000 bushels of sprigs, 5 acres of sod and a lot of hard work later, we have a pretty nice golf course to enjoy. The initial project goal of having a course that peaks on July 15th is well within sight. Life goes on though! Even though bermuda is the desired grass now on most of the Manakin, we still want to try and eradicate common bermuda that has infiltrated the native areas. A bleaching herbicide is used to limit photosynthesis in the bermuda in these areas. This is a multiple application and multiple year process. This is the same herbicide used previously in the cool season fairways to help take out bermuda but even at 10x the previous rate the process will take a while. Our Virginia Tech intern Cole Vincel has been going through a variety of paces this summer. He is responsible for the irrigation fix right of 2 if you hit it over there. This was the first week in a w...

The heat is on the way for the weekend. The Planet air machines made their way across the Sabot greens early in the week in order to help with some gas exchange. The machine uses small knives to slice the upper profile and the rollers keep the surface smooth. The process is virtually unnoticeable but the impacts on water movement, air exchange and root initiation are very positive. A more noticeable venting was done on the Manakin tees with the deep tine machines. Half inch diameter tines were driven 9 inches deep in order to ensure water penetration in these sand based tees for the summer. With the Latitude growing nicely on the Manakin now we are dialing in the mowing process. We have moved from mowing 25 acres of cool season fairways to mowing 55 acres of warm season fairways, tees and approaches all together with not much change in the equipment. Luckily our lease terms are coming up so we are looking at demoing the proper machines to mow this bermuda. The demo machine pictured has...

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...