First Week of June

 It certainly was a busy week on the golf course.  Although Memorial Day offered the golf course maintenance staff an afternoon free of work, the lost time made the remainder of the week a little crazy.  Besides the normal weekly mowing and course upkeep, we were also able to get some special projects completed this week.  As many of you have noticed, all of the annual flowers were installed on Tuesday through Thursday.  As I had alluded to in the May Divot, the flower beds will most definitely have a different look this year, and we believe that the much more intricate designs will be well-received.

On Tuesday, five pallets of sod also arrived, and we used it to improve a number of areas on the course.  Most of the sod was laid where a large silver maple was removed on the left side of 10 green.  This tree, and the extensive amount of cart traffic that traveled on both of its sides, made it impossible to maintain a stand of turf that would allow for fair shots.  Last week, on the same day that the aforementioned silver maple was removed, a large poplar that was between 11 and 12 was also taken down.  The poplar had a very large crack that made the tree a tremendous safety concern.  Getting back to the sod, we also spruced up the cart path surrounds by 13 green, 17 tee, and 18 tee, and in my opinion, this work has made the paths look almost like new.

As part of our Audubon environmental initiative, we've also recently created a few no-mow areas on the course.  These areas are located to the right of 3 forward tee, on either side of the cart path by 9 green, and on the left side of 16.  These areas were sprayed with a herbicide to kill the unsightly weeds, and we expect them to evolved over time.  The area by 9 green will take a new look when we remove the invasive buckthorn, honeysuckle, and box elder plants that have taken over the wooded areas on both sides of the cart path.  We removed some of the invasives a few weeks ago, but a broken chipper prevented us from getting very far.  In time, it is our hope that this area will take on the look of an oak savanna.

Today, we replaced some of the damaged turf areas near the center of 7 green with plugs from the back right perimeter of the green.  Hopefully, these will be the last of the plugs.  Although they are unsightly and occasionally slightly bumpy, the plugs that we installed in 7, 8, and 14 green have greatly enhanced recovery during the chilly spring (more on that later).  Due to the number of plugs that we knew would have to be done, we took the majority of them from the chipping green.  Unfortunately, the many different colors and compositions of creeping bentgrass and Poa annua that populate our greens make these plugs stand out, but they will blend in over time.  If you look at the ugly plugs that line much of the chipping green, we hope that you'll agree that the mismatched plugs on 7, 8, and 14 look a whole lot better than the alternative.

Returning to talk of the frigid spring (ironically on a 90+ degree day), Chad and I received an email from Dr. Doug Soldat, who's a Soil Science professor at UW-Madison.  His email contained the graphs that I've copied below, and the data that was collected at the Arlington, WI agricultural research station really illustrates the the growing degree day lag that's been discussed in prior posts.  Of course, after today's heat, I'm just about ready for some cooler weather...

Please note that the graphs will only show up when using the Firefox browser, and they'll be a red "x" in Internet Explorer.  Sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm not tech savvy enough to correct the problem.

Although they may be difficult to read, these graphs show the normal growing degree units (the solid blue line), along with years that have had significant deviations (both high and low) over the past 30 years.  2011 is represented by the black dashed line.