Coming Out of Dormancy

As our fairways are finally coming out of dormancy, so should I with this blog.  We did see the greening of our fairways earlier than normal due to the above average temperatures in late winter, but with a more normal April and so far what seems to be a slightly below average May in temperatures, and with a lot of rain and lack of sun, we just didn't see growth in our fairways.  Growth was so slow, that we finally mowed them for the first time this past week.
 
While the blog has been quite since December, we certainly haven't been in regards to getting things done.  It actually has been a pretty busy winter and spring, yet odd as well. 

We did our normal winter projects, such as repairing and painting golf accessory items. But we also stayed busy with above average play through the winter and early spring.  Winter wasn't even really winter it seemed.  We even had our Forsythia budding out the earliest I can remember, (and I know, I record the actual dates every spring, going back to 2012. Forsythia this year was starting to bud on February 13th.  The average time frame is usually in March, typically that second week.

Our normal winter projects of painting our par 3 yardage blocks and repair and painting our ballwashers.  While the paint we used last year for ballwashers was suppose to match our flags last season, out in the sun, they really didn't, so we just looked for a good Royal Blue to paint them with this year.                                                                                                                

     

But the best part of winter was getting to attend the Golf Industry Show (GIS) in Orlando, staged by the Golf Course Superintendent's Association of America (GCSAA), where I had to chance to learn and network, which always seems to recharge the batteries for the season.  I also represented our local chapter the Ozark Turf Association at the Annual Meeting casting our chapter's votes and also filled in casting votes for our friends in the St. Louis area for the Mississippi Valley Golf Course Superintendents Chapter.  It is not every year I get to attend, so thanks to my employer and also my chapter.

 


With the mild weather, we also were able to make many of our applications on time, we were able to clean up the poa out of our Bermuda tees and fairways, get our pre-emergent applications down, and make our fairy ring preventive applications on time.  I was somewhat worried about the timing, with warm temperatures coming so early, March being above normal,  April found itself being closer to normal, which I believe allowed our applications to work, as it appears now anyway.  I still have my fingers crossed as we were the recipients of what seemed endless rains, so there is that worry of products breaking down prematurely, but that gives something to look forward to (or not) as the season progresses.

Truck making our fairway fertilizer/pre-emergent application.  We split out pre-emergent applications on fairways.  We will make a spray in March, and then the truck with the fertilizer and pre-emergent comes in for us in April.  He can load and spread in under an hour.  If we had the spreader to do it, our best timing would be 6 hours times 2 people (loader and operator)  Plus it would take time away from our other applications in our programs. 

It seems that despite the rains, we have been able to keep up with most of our greens programs, be it we might be a week behind with the verticutting and topdressing program.  As for other areas of the course, we seem to be with in sight of our timeframes we set for ourselves to get these projects and applications done.  Items such as fertilizing, seeding, slicing, applying preventive products and even getting in a post herbicide application, we feel the course is doing fine.  

 

Are aeration process above, which this year was done in one day as we raced to finish before heavy rains had hit.  The one thing that we missed due to the weather was our normal fertilizer application on newly aerated greens. 

To the right is one of our verticutting and topdressing runs.  We aim to verticut greens four times before the summer arrives.  The results we see are leaf blades that do not get "fat and happy" so we see better ball roll from the practice.  The greens also have thatch removed before summer so they do not get soft and puffy during the middle of summer. 


This has been a quick attempt to get readers caught up on our busy summer.  Now the goal is to avoid long winded post, and to provide more consistent and item focused posts on a regular basis.  We work hard to prepare a plan and timeframe for our many tasks on the course, this blog should be no different.

I thank you for reading!

Mel