Fall is Here

I am sorry for not posting anything over the last week or so. I have been extremely busy with tournament preparations for our annual "Friends/Foes" event, and I was out of town at a conference for a few days as well. The weather has been extremely good over the last week. We received about 2.5" of rainfall early last week that came in a short amount of time causing some bunker damage. However it was extremely beneficial to the rest of the golf course as things were getting a bit dry. Also we have been busy chasing the animal damage that occurs every year around this time. The skunks, raccoons, and opossums come out looking for grubs, doing serious damage by digging up the turf scavenging for the grubs. Our line of defense is to try and beat them to the spots and get the grubs treated before they start the digging. However this is extremely tough to get every spot all the time and some nights the animals will find more hot spots then others. We do apply a preventative treatment for grubs during the season but you still get some isolated spots were the chemical didn't get watered down into the ground well enough because that area was hydrophobic or repelled the water. If we find some grubs we treat the areas with an insecticide provided by the chemical company that kills the grubs on contact. Depending on the severity of the digging most of these areas will recover. However there will be some areas that get dug up enough that we will either seed them or sod them to do the repair. It is a long and hard fight but we do it every year and will continue to battle. Today we are starting the aerification process in the roughs around some of the tees and bunker areas. We will move to the green bank areas and the rough after our Wolf Day on Tuesday. Also this week we will began some spot seeding in various thin areas around the golf course as well. Starting this week we will be backing off the mowing of the zoysia fairways and tees to once a week as they have really slowed down. We will probably only mow them one or two more times before we start letting them get some growth to help protect them through the winter months. Have a great week and congratulations to Mike Garozzo and Shorty McKenney on winning the "Friends/Foes" event over the weekend!!!

Cold Front Is Here

Burrrr has been a very popular word used today as temperatures have plummeted to highs in the 50s and lows into the 40s. This is very unusual weather this early in the year. A lot of people have asked me if this is good for the golf course or not. This weather is unbelievably good for our cool season roughs and the greens as they recover after the aeration. Not so much for the zoysia grass however. The zoysia has really started losing it's color and has slowed down growing this week as a result of the weather change. We are going to back off our mowing frequency over the next week or so as the grass slows down. Our plan this year is to stop mowing the zoysia a little earlier in the year to help it grow some leaf tissue to help protect it more over the winter months and try to minimize any winter damage. I will give more details on this once we get closer to not mowing anymore. Also this week we removed some of the native grass on the right side of #10 fairway and installed some new fescue sod. Our hope is that this change makes this hole a bit easier for everyone to find their tee shot when it goes on the right side. I have attached a picture below of the new sod. I hope everyone finds this change to be very beneficial. The greens are continuing to recover nicely after the aeration. We repaired some collar areas on the greens this week where the turf was a little weak and then once we aerified it was going to have a hard time recovering. Next week we will busy getting ready for the annual "Friends and Foes" tournament. My staff and I are looking forward to the event as it is one of our favorites to get ready for. Have a great weekend!

Greens are Healing

The weather and temperatures have been cooperating very well lately. Greens are continuing to heal and are doing it rather quickly. I took a picture this morning and have attached it below. You can tell they have filled in quite a bit since we aerified them last week. We applied a thin coat of topdressing sand yesterday afternoon to help fill up any voids in the greens that were present after the sand has settled in the holes from our recent rains and from our irrigation cycles. Our plan is to apply one maybe two more thin topdressing leading up to the "Freinds and Foes" event next weekend. We are currently mowing the greens with a ride on triplex mower at a little taller height then we normally mow our greens. Thus causing the greens to be a little slower. This is done to help the plants recover quicker, but also to protect our walk behind greens mowers from all the sand. As you can imagine sand will grind on the blades pretty good and cause some major dulling issues. So to help with this we utilize a riding mower for a couple of times until the sand is mostly worked into the greens profile and the holes are for the most part filled in. Hopefully be the end of the week we will be back to mowing with our walk behinds. I hope everyone is enjoying the week I will update you later in the week on the progress on the greens and our sodding project on the right side of #10.

Friday Course Update

Our weather pattern is changing and it looks like the nice Fall temperatures and humidity are on their way here to Kansas City. These lower temperatures will really help the greens continue to recover nicely after the aeration and will benefit the course nicely as we get ready to start our fall rough aeration and spot seeding. The greens aeration went very well all things considered. We got slowed down a bit waiting on the sand to dry after the rain, but I am not going to complain too much as the temperatures and wind were very manageable. Any rain is good rain right now. I really appreciate everyone's patience as I know aeration is a disruptive practice to our greens. However the benefit that we get from doing it is so much better then the alternative. I look at it as a short term pain for a long term gain! The heavy duty greens roller has been out on the greens the past couple of days continuing to try and smooth out all the ruts and footprints from the aeration. Recovery time after aeration usually takes about two weeks. I have attached a picture below showing us rolling the greens this morning and what the greens look like today. I have mentioned in past blog post of how much the zoysia has been loving these warm and humid days. I took a picture this morning of us mowing the fairways and another somewhat close up of our zoysia to show how good it is doing right now. The zoysia looks the best right now that it has looked all season in my mind with the color and thickness. Have a great weekend!!!

Aeration Day Is Here

It is finally here and despite the 2.5" of rain that we have received over the past two days we are still able to start the aerification process on the greens. The wet conditions may slow us up a bit as we are going to have to let the plugs and sand dry out quite a bit before we can pick them up and before we can start to broom the sand into the aerification holes on the greens. This may cause the process to be extended a bit, but hopefully all goes well and we can get most of them completed today. If we don't get completely done today we will finish them in front of any play tomorrow. I will post some photos of us aerifying once the sun comes up and I have some light so the picture shows up. Have a great day!!