Monday, September 19th, 2011

Friday I attended the OSU Turf Alumni & Friends Weekend and Field Day in Corvallis. It was great to see such a great turnout. The day started with the field day at the farm followed by golf at Trysting Tree then back to the farm for dinner. The turf farm is looking as good as it ever has. Dr. Rob Golembiewski and his staff and students have been doing lots of great research including, divot recovery, green speed, poa fertility, anthracnose and Microdochium patch and much more. There is now more than 20,000 square feet of putting green turf in which to perform much of their work. The day concluded when Rob presented Pat Doran, Superintendent at Trysting Tree and myself with an award of appreciation for contributing to the success of the program. It has always been an honor for me to speak to the students when ever I am invited, but I never expected to receive an award. Another classy way Rob has found to recognize individuals for their efforts. Thanks Rob. 

We had a great week last week. The tournaments went off without a hitch from our end and we managed to get all of our cultural jobs complete. We fertilized the greens Tuesday, once again with zero nitrogen. With the way they are growing I'm afraid that if we added N to the mix we would be pushing to much growth.  We decided to take advantage of the evenings to work on the course with tournaments scheduled each day. Wednesday we topdressed all the greens starting at 6pm and wrapped it all up by 8:00. Thursday we decided we should at least try to mow half of the fairways in the evening to prepare for the 7:45 shotgun Friday morning but we weren't able to get on the course until 7:00. Thanks to Mike Holl, Brian and Jorge for staying until 9:00 to get the job done.

This week we will be in a similar situation with the tournament but we should be able to stay up on all of the mowing in the morning hours. Our second fairway fertilizer application is scheduled this week and we will be planning on Thursday for that. This is also our week to fertilize the tee boxes but I think we have some room to push them back a bit. They are still growing well and look great. We are going to start plugging the tees next week on Wednesday and will coordinate with the pro shop on reversing the nines if necessary. The greens aerification is right around the corner. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the weather will hold. The warmer the temperature the quicker they will heal.

Brian has been working on the restroom enclosure at the 11th tee. If all goes well that should be wrapped up by Tuesday. With the cooler temps Zeferino will have time to resume raising sprinkler heads. He has already adjusted all the range tee heads which look great. As time allows we will be starting a few small drainage projects starting with the wet area along the path near the 14th tees and the puddle along the path near the 16th green.

Wednesday marks the first day of Fall and to honor the change in seasons we shut the deep well off on Sunday. This year was one of our best water years that I can remember. We always seemed to have plenty of water in the lakes while maintaining an adequate level of irrigation on the golf course. This doesn't mean that we are done irrigating for the season, chances are we will irrigate plenty by the end of October. I would like to draw the lake level down somewhat allowing the fall rains to fill the lakes. Since most of the drain lines feed the lakes I'm sure we won't have a problem filling them back up. My other reason is cost savings. With our ET rate down now that we are in the fall season we will be able to save a considerable amount of money by not running the deep well.