Drying Out and Some Heat

What a change in the weather we have had over the past 7 days or so.  The cool wet weather gave away to mid 90 highs and mid 70s for lows.  These temperatures really helped us in getting things dried out, however they made things interesting when it came to managing the cool season roughs.  As a turf manager the last thing you want to see is a bunch of moisture followed closely behind by mid 90's degree temperatures.  This pattern doesn't allow the turf to establish a good solid root system and on top of that it breeds disease as the humidity levels give the spores and fungi a play ground to swim around and infect turf plants.   So needless to say we have been extremely busy this week trying to get caught up on all the mowing and clipping management and we also were busy applying control products for diseases on our greens and in our roughs.  We were able to get it out in time to control most areas however there are a few areas, especially where we flooded, that the disease was a bit more severe.  We have sprayed these areas and they should eventually recover over time. The temperatures cause problems for shallow rooted grasses such as our Kentucky Bluegrass as it doesn't hold up to the traffic and heat as much as the Fescue.   We have been doing some spot watering in some of the cart traffic areas and in and around the green complexes to help the turf recover.  Coincidentally our Zoysia grass fairways and tees have absolutely exploded over the last week.  Our fairways and tees are really starting to green up and grow.  The turf team applied a fertilizer this week so they should continue to grow and fill in and become a lot more consistent then they have been coming out of the slow Spring.  Our zoysia farm has dried out  so we are going to be starting some zoysia sodding in a few of the thin areas in our fairways.  I don't know how far we will get as the extended forecast looks rather bleak with rain chances of 50% or higher every day for the next 10 days.  We will work as hard as possible to try and get as much done as we can.  I attached a picture below of our fairways showing how good they look after they have dried out and we got a good mowing on them.  Also I attached a photo of some bird damage that we had on our #17 green.  The birds were digging for some sort of insect and really did a number on the green.  We are applying an insecticide today to try and help with this issue.  As you can see there is always something new happening around here and it isn't always related to weather or golfers!!  Have a great weekend!

Zoysia Looking Good!!

Bird Damage on #17 Green