First Taste of Summer

The sunshine continues to shine this week and temperatures are supposed to be in the upper 80's for a couple of days. This is going to give us our first taste of some summer weather when it comes to the temperatures. Along with the warm temps we have had some very windy conditions that have really started to dry some areas out. I am really hoping that the chances of rain this week come true and we get some much needed rain. However we are not nearly as bad off as some of our counterparts to our south and west so I know it can get much worse if it wants to. We have had a good start to the week as things have gone very well. Monday we topdressed the greens to continue to help keep them as smooth and firm as possible. The greens have been behaving extremely well so far this year. Our root development has been as good as I have seen in my time here. We are finding roots consistently at a 6.5" - 8" depth pretty consistently. I downloaded a picture of a 6.5" core that I took this morning and it shows a little white root hanging out the bottom. I actually broke them off on accident but they are at least 6.5" down and continued in the hole a ways more which is tremendous. Depending on if it decides to rain or not we might do another venting of the greens later this week to help us continue to promote the rooting and keep the oxygen and nutrients moving down to the roots. We are also continuing to do some patching of some winter kill areas in our fairways. Our latest one we sodded was #8 approach area. I have seen some nice recovery in a lot of the areas over the last week or so. The Frost from Friday - Sunday however will set them back another week or so from really growing, as it is hard for the zoysia plant to reverse it's growth habit from thinking it needed to go into dormancy with the frost to actively growing again with the warmer temperatures. We will continue to monitor these areas and repair them if needed. A good sign that the zoysia is starting to think about growing again is the fact that it started shooting it's ugly purple seed heads. This will go on for about 2 weeks and then it should stop so if you were wondering what the purple hue is in the fairways this is the reason. Enjoy the sun and have a good week!!