Needless to say our weather over the past week or so has been CRAZY! High temperatures have been in the upper 90's to low 70's and lows have ranged from low 60's to mid to upper 70's. Throw on top of that quite a bit of rain and humidity and you got yourself a tough situation when it comes to growing grass. Root structure for the turf is shallow due to the frequent rain events so when the temperatures do soar into the upper 80's and 90's things get a little hairy trying to keep cool season roughs alive and not over water them at the same time. This set up also makes managing greens a challenge as the frequent moisture and high humidity cause disease pressure and make water management very difficult. Due to the amounts of moisture and humidity it is tough to keep green speeds consistent day in and day out. Example is one day it will be 80 degrees with 65% humidity and the greens will be slower then when it is 90 degrees and 35% humidity and we are applying a lot more water by hand to areas on the greens. They will tend to be quicker on the hotter day due to the lack of humidity and moisture in the air. During these temperature extremes we also have to be smart with how much equipment pressure we put on the greens (i.e. rollers, verticut, topdress, etc.) to try and not cause anymore stress then they are already under. This is always a tough juggling act for all superintendents as we want the greens to be as fast as anyone while keeping them healthy and alive. We currently are mowing our greens at .105" and are rolling them 4-5 days a week depending on the weather. We verticut and topdressed the greens on Monday taking advantage of the rain and cooler weather that we are forecast for on Tuesday and Wednesday. This practice will help to remove any leaf tissue that the mowers have missed (which is one of the factors in green speed) and will help us to incorporate our topdressing sand better all while providing a nice opening in the surface so that oxygen and water can move down into the root zone. There aren't a lot of years that I verticut on July 6th as temperatures and stress on the greens is usually to high for them to tolerate it. This will help with some of the inconsistency in speed, but a lot of it will still depend on the weather conditions each day. Our goal is to have the greens as close to our standard green speed day in and day out, but the moisture levels and temperature readings dictate the speeds a lot more then most people know. Also the later in the day you play the slower greens typically get as the turf grows throughout the day. We try to slow this growth process down by applying growth regulators, but they still tend to grow, hence why we mow them about every day.
We received 1.75" of rain over night and didn't have a lot of storm damage. I feel very fortunate that we dodged a bullet with some of the areas around Kansas City that got hit pretty hard by flooding and high winds. However there is more rain in the forecast and depending on who you watch or what you read it looks like there is the possibility for a lot more rain. My hope is that it misses us and things will stay like they are and we can get back to our normal schedule on Wednesday and Thursday of mowing and doing our normal maintenance. Also as soon as conditions dry out we will try and finish our fairway and tee aerification. We are almost done on the fairways as the only ones left are (1,2,3,7, & 18) and we still have all of the tees and driving range to complete.
No comments:
Post a Comment