Heat Advisory

It's been a great week on the golf course.  We were able to apply a light rate of fertilizer to the fairways and now have 99% of the course sprayed for Japanese beetles.  Additionally, the weather was very mild, and the turf and maintenance crew enjoyed the cooler temperatures.  Considering that we've only received 0.5" of rain over the past 25 days, the course is looking and playing very nicely.  As such, here's a picture that I took today of the 8th hole...

...and considering that it's the middle of July, everything looks pretty darn good.

Now, onto the bad news...

If you've been paying attention to the weather forecast, you're well aware that the next 10 days, and hopefully not more, are going to be downright HOT.  After today, the lowest high temperature in the 10-day forecast is 87 degrees and that's for next Sunday.  Besides extreme daytime temperatures, the mercury is only going to fall into the high 60s to mid 70s during the nighttime hours.  As you can probably imagine, it's going to be a very stressful time for the turf, as there will be no respite from super-optimal temperatures.  With these temperatures, the plants will not be photosynthesizing, and because the plants are constantly respiring, such an extended spell of hot weather has the potential to use all of the energy that the plants have stored. This is indirect temperature kill, and besides having healthy plants going into the stress period (which we do), there isn't a lot that can be done to prevent it from happening.  Plants can also suffer from direct temperature kill when the leaf temperatures reach 100-130 degrees, and when the air temperatures are 90+ degrees, the green leaves (white grass would be nice) can easily get to this temperature on sunny days by absorbing the sunlight.

Aside from applying the proper plant protectants, which we are doing tomorrow and Monday, water management is the key to get through these times with the least amount of damage possible.  Although it may be tempting to water like crazy, this can actually do more harm than good during extreme heat.  Water holds heat much more easily than air, and saturated soils would bake the plants.  However, we have to make sure that there's enough water to allow for both transpirational cooling and respiration.  There's no doubt that it's a tricky balance, and we will be doing plenty of hand watering to provide the most optimal soil moisture that we can.  Additionally, there's a good chance that we will be briefly running irrigation heads on the fairways during the early afternoon hours.  This technique is called "syringing", and it can prevent direct high temperature kill by cooling the plants by as much as ten degrees.  So, if you have to dodge some sprinklers next week, just know that the turf appreciates it.

Continuing our defensive approach, we will limit mowing of greens, tees, and fairways as much as possible, and they will be mown as early in the morning as is possible.  Additionally, the greens may be a little bit slower until the heat and humidity subside.  We will be slightly raising the mowing heights on the greens to alleviate a little bit of stress and to prevent them from scalping, as the greens get "puffy" from the humidity.  And, finally, we may restrict cart traffic to the rough only during the afternoon heat.  As the picture below illustrates, stressed turf and carts don't get along very well...

Carts can damage stressed turf, as is evident on the right side of number 7.  Hundreds of these in the fairways wouldn't be a pretty sight.

Well, that's a lot of doom and gloom for one post.  Although we learned a long time ago that we can't control the weather, you can be assured that we're making very calculated decisions and will be busting our humps to keep the course as healthy as possible.