Conditions
We had a great week of weather to put the course in shape topped by a great weekend. The greens are good, the fairways are still firm but with more grass and the ponds look low but clear.
Check out the photo above. This plug is off 14B. I have never seen roots like that on this green. I found this on Saturday while changing the cups!
Greens
We fertilized this week and actually left out the nitrogen on purpose. We have been seeing a trend of longer residual growth and now dips in color so we decided that the greens were doing fine on their own. We also sprayed Daconil and Signature this week which should slow the anthacnose a little on the Poa but we will spray again on Wednesday with something a little stronger. A couple greens are getting hit hard but the bent is filling in right in its place.
Today would have been a verticut plus topdress day but due to the tournament schedule we will have to postpone it. We will try to get one more in before we aerate.
Tees
We are going to aerify this Wednesday and get as many done as possible. What we don't finish we will pick up on the following Wednesday. We are working around the tournament schedule.
Fairways
We were also able to get the fertilizer down on Wednesday and we have started seeing a response by Friday. It was 12 weeks since our last application and probably could have gone longer but we needed to get it down before all of our other fall projects come due. We cut out a fertilizer application this year which is great. I will plan on the same scenario next year.
I had Staab skip the Primo application in August but am going to having him spray now that the fairways are growing again. I was mowing 17 and 18 this morning and was "bailing hay". The Primo will leave the fairways much cleaner after mowing.
We will start topdressing as soon as the greens and tees are done. I expect the majority of it to be completed in October.
Rough
We are continuing to irrigate that rough and the range in spite of nights that we have turned everything else off. It is great to see the grass come back to color again. If we do fertilized this fall it will be on a case by case basis.
Projects
One of the things we have been wanting to do was control the broad leaf weeds in the tall rough. now that it is all mowed down it is a great time to spray it. This year we saw way to many weeds which only blow off into the rough and the fairways. It is time to control. It will cost around $90 per acre to do. By only hitting the worst areas we should be spraying around 10 to 15 acres. I have budgeted for up to 22 acres in September.
Equipment
The new greens mowers will be delivered on Wednesday. We needed to make a fairly sizable order with Les Schwab this month. Many of our tires are beyond safe operation and now that the wet season in imminent we felt it was time to start changing them out. We budgeted $3500 in July which should more than cover it.
Ball Field
The phone line is now disconnected so I went ahead and purchased a small laptop for $330. I will load the software and will use it to download the payroll information on Wednesday.
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