Welcome to my blog!
It is my intention to give the readers a better understanding of what we do to maintain The Farms Country Club's 18 hole championship golf course and grounds.


Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Condition of Greens. What to Expect!

All greens have been aerified, overseeded, topdressed and dragged.

GREENS WILL ALL BE OPEN DAILY UNLESS WEATHER DICTATES OTHERWISE!

We also applied our second application for Poa Annua seed-head control.

Here is what to expect:
We need soil temperatures to warm up enough for all turfgrasses to "break dormancy". Poa Annua starts to grow before Creeping Bentgrass. This is one of the predominant reasons green's turf is uneven early in the season.

Complicating our desire to provide you with an early, smooth putting surface, is our use of growth regulators. They are applied early in the season to eliminate near 90% of the Poa Annua seed-heads. Without these applications, we would reduce playability until JUNE! The drawback is that the growth regulator applications also slow the recovery of the aerification holes.

In early Spring, I deliberately play a delicate game of balancing our seed-head reduction and fertilization with aerification and the recovery there of.

My primary goal is balancing turf health while providing you with outstanding putting conditions for the longest continuous period of time until August when we aerify the greens again.

What we do now for turf health, sets the tone for the entire season's playability!

In short, regardless of the crazy Spring weather we have seen, our greens are healthy and they will get better every day!

Let's root for warmer soil temperatures! I'll do the rest!