Mowing Week

This week, much of our time was spent trying to keep up with the quickly-growing grass.  The fairways grew so much over the weekend that we had to mow them on Monday and Tuesday to just catch up.  Luckily, with the cooler days and nights that we've had this week, growth has slowed on the fine turf areas (greens, fairways, and tees), but the rough and banks are still growing like crazy.  As we'd hoped, we're starting to see a significant amount of germination from the seeding that Chad did in the rough areas, and the 0.75" rainfall that we received overnight will certainly help them along.

Over the past two weeks, Omar has also been doing quite a bit of filling in and seeding of depressions that had developed in the roughs.  Often times, these dips form from the rotting stumps or roots of trees that were cut down.  So, if you notice random spots in the rough that look as if they were just filled with soil and seed, that's the explanation.

On the 6th hole, the trees make it look like March, but the turf thinks that it's May or June.

Yesterday, Chad and I fertilized the more divot-filled tees.  We really want to get them filled-in and growing as much as possible prior to the heart of the golf season.  I also spent a couple of hours fertilizing heavily-trafficked and/or thin areas in the roughs and banks.  With very few cart paths, keeping these areas healthy is always a challenge.   When possible, we try to fertilize prior to a rain event, and Mother Nature certainly did her part overnight.

It goes without saying that it's been an interesting spring for turf managers.  Many of our spring applications are timed with either soil temperatures or with growing degree days, and due to the unusual stretch of weather that we had from March 14-22, the normally-used thresholds were reached in record time.  For example, once soil temperatures at a 3" depth reach 65 degrees for a stretch of consecutive days, we are supposed to spray for summer patch.  Summer patch is a disease that infects and impairs Poa annua roots once the soil temperatures reach this point, and its effects are not seen until the compromised roots cause the plants to struggle in the summer heat.  In 2011, we made our first summer patch application on May 13, and if we were to have gone by the book, this year's application should have occurred on March 22.  However, we made the decision to not spray.  This decision was made after consulting with both Dr. Jim Kerns, UW-Madison's turfgrass disease pathologist and with local veteran superintendents.  Of course, we also used our own intuition, knowledge, and observations of the slow-to-wake Poa.  Besides treating for summer patch, others have had to wrestle over treating for Take-all patch, for crabgrass, for broadleaf weed pre-emergence, and for Poa annua seedhead control.

One unfortunate side effect of the early warm-up was that we weren't able to apply a pre-emergent herbicide that we were planning on using to control prostrate knotweed, which is our peskiest weed.  Although the herbicide was ordered in November, we weren't even able to get it before the knotweed starting germinating.  As a result, we'll treat it with a post-emergent herbicide, and we'll still use the pre-emergent to prevent any other seeds that are in the soil from germinating later.

It looks as if this weekend is shaping up to be another great one for golf, and we hope that you're able to enjoy a round at Blackhawk.