Monday, June 28th, 2010

Conditions
It has been fun to watch the course evolve with the nice weather. With every nice day the course seems to improve its appearance drastically. The uncut fine fescue unfortunately offers a tough hazard to the golfers but the good news is we will be cutting it down in a couple months. I personally love the contrast it offers throughout the course, it makes for some great photo opportunities.

We have  been topdressing fairways this week and will have them all wrapped up by Tuesday. The greens are in better shape this week. I never thought I would use social media to solve a turf disease problem but Facebook came in handy last week. I posted a picture of the Take-all-patch disease that I was seeing on the Turf Diseases Page and Dr. Leah Brilman contacted me directly and mentioned calcium levels. That provoked my gray matter to remember that Take-all-patch can surface at higher pH's and along with the higher pH manganese can become unavailable. This year we happened to make an extra Verde-Cal application, which is an outstanding product and is probably one of the most active calcium applications you can make. The result was a quick and large increase in pH resulting in the onset of Take-all-patch. Our remedy was an application of Heritage along with .05lbs of manganese per 1000 square feet and two tenths of a pound of nitrogen (from ammonium sulfate) to stimulate some growth. It may take an additional application or two of the manganese but I am confident we will not be seeing Take-all-patch much longer.

Projects

The painting and the landscaping around the new event center has come along nicely this week. I have been extremely pleased with the work of both, Anderson Painting and Showscapes. The painting was completed in one day with minimal interference around the clubhouse and it turned out great. Chris Anderson will be bringing by some samples soon so we can choose a color for the deck. We will need to determine the best day to paint it so we don't interfere with any tournament activities.



Showscapes hit the ground running on Monday morning. Their first day the essentially hand graded everything and installed irrigation. The second day the topsoil was placed and by the third day he plants were laid out. We chose to irrigate the plants by drip irrigation to conserve water and to remove the possibility of over spraying the new building. Here are some picture of there progress over a three day period.

 Tree Troubles Update
 Here is an update on my "Tree Troubles" blog  on February 8th, 2010. The first picture here was taken in January and the second was taken this month. The good news is that I am seeing a lot of  new growth on the tips of the branches, especially the tree on the left. The bad news is not all the trees treated have quite this much new growth but there is some which is a good thing. Whether it is a result of the air knife that remains to be seen. We will keep a close eye on the stressed trees and if the ones we treated last February show signs of improvement we will look into further treatments this winter.