Monday, June 20th, 2011

With the soil temps finally exceeding 60 degrees this week, we are seeing some of the finest turf conditions of the season thus far. Irrigation cycles are still few and far between, we have only had to run the fairways once and that was just to get our first application of Dispatch (wetting agent) out.

Monday we verticut the greens with the Thatch-away units. We followed with a little higher rate of sand. Now that the greens are in a growth mode it is important that we match the rate of sand with the rate of growth to avoid layering and a thatch build up. Our goal will be to apply more frequently, maintaining a twice a month schedule at a lighter rate.

We are on our second round of the Redox fertilizer on the tee boxes and so far I am impressed with the results. We started out with a quarter pound of nitrogen in our first application but have now decreased to a tenth. For the tee program, I have asked the distributor to deliver the Redox in a dry formulation instead of  pre-mixed like we do with the greens formulation. It now only comes in a single 5 gal bucket that is only half full. We simply add the water to the bucket, turning it into an instant slurry, then add it to the tank with our desired amount of nitrogen. It's that easy. Compared to our previous granular program we will be seeing more uniform growth and repair with much denser turf at a much more affordable price.

Killdeer, Charadrius vociferus

Keep an eye out the window of the event center. A mother killdeer has been on the nest at the base of the maple tree for some time now and should be expecting her chicks any day now. We have placed irrigation flags around the tree to let you know where it is. Please use caution around the nest and try not to disturb her. Also, watch out for here little puffballs around the cart path. The killdeer are notorious for looking like they are injured to draw your attention away from the chicks but what we need to look out for is while watching her, we may be running over her chicks!

Dave Phipps, Jim Goritsan

Last week I took a break and finally played my first round at Stone Creek!  Now that spring term is over and I am no longer teaching my turf class, I took the opportunity to play with the Wednesday Men's Club. The highlight of the day was playing with one of my college fraternity brothers. I haven't seen Jim since we graduated 26 years ago! He now lives in Fort Lauderdale Florida and fly's 737s for American Airlines. Now that we have reconnected, we plan to play more golf when he is in town visiting his family.

Finally, I just wanted to show this shot of the event center decorated for the Ladies Club Flag Day event on Tuesday. They came in the night before to set it up so I took the opportunity to get some shots in the morning.  I love the way they go "all in" for their events. We are lucky to have such a strong group at Stone Creek.