June is Here

What a wet month the month of May was!  One of the wettest months on record according to researchers and weather forecasters.  I can believe it as I have never in my five years of being at Wolf Creek seen this property as wet as it was this past weekend.  Luckily we were still able to host the annual Wolf Creek Invitational only losing 9 holes of competition to the weather.  However at times it looked like it was going to be questionable to even play any of it.  Hopefully we will get a nice dry week this week and get caught up on the mowing and applications that we couldn't get done the past couple of weeks.  Today we are solid tining the greens to open them up a bit after the wet weather we have had.  This practice will help dry them out and supply the roots with some much needed oxygen after being saturated for so many days.  I couldn't have been more happy then I was over the past couple of weeks with our greens.  They have stayed pretty firm and consistent through the wet soggy weather.  This is a testament to our agronomic program and shows that what we do to try and keep our infiltration rates (how fast water moves through the soil) as high as possible really pays off.  Also today we are applying another light topdressing to the greens to continue to help them stay firm and as consistently smooth as possible.  Our rough mowers are out this morning trying to get as much rough mowed as they can.  Most of the areas we should be able to mow, however there are still some wet areas that we will have to leave and hopefully come back to later in the week.  Our plan is to try and mow fairways and tees on either Tuesday or Wednesday depending on when they dry out enough to get the mowers on them.  We are also planning this week to do some applications in our roughs for disease prevention and weed control that we haven't been able to do with the wet conditions.  Lastly our #5 creek project held up extremely well over the past month with all the water that has been thrown at it.  We didn't have any wash outs or erosion issues on the slopes.  The only blemish we had was it looks like we lost a little bit of our rough in front of the bunker due to it being under water for so many consecutive days.  We will be replacing this turf once conditions dry out here and at the sod farm where we get our sod.  I have attached a few pictures from today showing the solid tine on the greens and the topdressing.  I hope everyone has a great week and I look forward to seeing all of you here at the Club soon. 

Venting of the Greens

Solid Tine Holes

Topdressing Greens

New Putting Green