July 1

We have begun our typical summer rain pattern. Glorious mornings, heats up fast, cloudy afternoons, and rains in the late afternoon....YEAHHHHHHHHH! As you may recall from the last posting, even though it was summer water was in short supply. Now, Mother Nature is lending a helping hand.

We are still rolling along with the summer plans. Next week we are closing again for aerification. I am anticipating this time to go even more smoothly than the last time since we now know what to expect with the new course. The only thing different this time is that we will verti-cut the fairways and then topdress them. I eliminated this process in June since we were still unsure about available irrigation water. Now that its raining, there should be plenty of available water from the City so we can move forward with all of our plans.

A few things have happened recently that I thought I would share / educate everyone on. One being a recent application of a product called Curfew. Curfew is a soil injected pesticide that kills microscopic root parasites called nematodes. These parasites severely inhibit the grass roots from being able to supply the leaves with enough water and nutrients, thus causing drastic thinning of the canopy as seen below in a picture of #6 tees.


The material used to control nematode populations is sliced into the ground 6 inches deep and injected as a liquid. The liquid then volatilizes and diffuses up through the soil profile to reach the targeted pests. Here is a pic of #1 after treatment. The brown lines are not burns from the applied product, they are from where the injector cut the grass that was laying over and the leaf tissue died. Similar to if you cut a branch from a tree, the leaves will die because they can't receive any water or nutrients from the roots.


This is a pic of #14 fairway where the nematode population devastated the turf. These areas will be put on a heavy fertilizer diet to promote rapid recovery now that the root system can supply the leaves with what they need. Notice the lines running through the bare area. Again, that's from the process of injection.


A couple of days ago I was asked about our green's verti-cutting process. The person had seen it happening while playing, but didn't understand what all the machines were doing. Take a look at this short video I shot to help explain what we do to manage the thatch on the greens. Notice all the people and machines, this process takes 10 people to do it.


Hopefully by now everyone has seen my staff out edging the perimeters of the greens. We do this to keep the grass in the fairways and roughs (the Celebration) from creeping into the putting surface. Try as we may, its a losing battle in the end and we have to plug out what makes it past our lines of defense. These little hexagonal plugs of Mini Verde are where the celebration "popped up" and should knit in and become inconspicuous in a couple of weeks.


One of the things that I've wanted to do for a while is to edge the cart paths. We have been burning them back with weed killer to keep them from growing over, but we haven't traditionally edged them since the grass was planted. Well, keeping them pushed back chemically worked great...that is until one of the lines got pushed a little too far back, and then that line got pushed back a little more, and that's how some of our 8 foot average wide cart paths got to be 12 feet in some places. To correct this, I let the cart paths grow unrestricted so we could correct the width problem without having to sod the edges. Once the paths were grown back in, Keith got the guys out to finally edge them and boy do they look a ton better. It took 8 guys a week to go all the way around as compared to next door that would probably use 2-3 guys in a day. The reason for the huge difference is that we do not have a permanent edge like a piece of concrete that can be quickly edged and then blown off. Our paths have to be edged, then cleaned with a shovel, and then the material loaded into a cart and hauled off. It takes lots of labor! I know this isn't glamorous material, but it's the little victories that win the war.


Notice the right side compared to the left


I thought this was pretty cool, its an alligator laying in a drainage pipe with his nose into the current waiting on lunch to wash down. He is about 5 feet long...and FAT!


I'll be the first to admit that I push the staff like we are going down hill in a Ferrari, top gear, with the accelerator to the floor. But I do appreciate my men's hard work and I am also the first to say thank you to them when I hand out paychecks. I also let them know the Club appreciates their hard work by doing periodic cookouts for them. By the way, my guys go nuts for Johnsonville brats! We try to do this once a month and include some sort of safety training along with it.


Stay tuned for more exciting episodes...