Fantastic Weather Once Again

The weather around Kansas City continues to be unbelievably good. Again this week we set new lows for the month of July which has been terrific so far. Cooler temperatures allow the turf to exhale a little bit and relax and enjoy itself as it continues to grow. The staff has been busy working on various projects around the course this week enjoying this great weather as well. On Monday we did another verticutt and topdressing on the greens to continue to firm the surface and keep the greens nice and smooth. Doing this practice continues to help dilute the thatch layer in the top of the plants and helps to smooth the surface by breaking up the grain and cutting the leaf tissue that is left behind by the mowers when we mow. Also we are installing another senior tee on #16 and are harvesting the fescue/bluegrass sod in this area to repair some thin areas in some of our low lying areas around some drainage areas that had thinned out from all the moisture. We usually don't do any fescue/bluegrass sodding in July but that goes to show just what kind of a weather year we have really had. I am still waiting on the demo sweeper to show up so that we can start the aerification in the fairways. I am still hoping for it to show up this week so that we can get started. However we were able to get all the tee boxes aerified this week and this has really helped them take off and grow even more then they already were by helping them get oxygen and moisture down into the root zoned more efficiently and breaking up the compaction. Like I have mentioned before we still have a few areas in a couple of the fairways and a few other spots here and there that we are going to be sodding with zoysia once we get a few of these other projects completed. I also attached a picture below of the root growth we have had on our greens this year. I know a lot of it has to do with the weather we have been having, but I also know that our agronomic practices we have been doing over the last four years is really starting to pay off and we are now developing a very strong root system in our greens. This plug was taken on the fourth of July and I have never seen the roots that deep this late in the summer before.