USGA: 2 – 4 – 6 – 8 We Dont Need To Cultivate - August 2010

USGA: 2 – 4 – 6 – 8 We Dont Need To Cultivate - August 2010

Lack of Air Movement Thins-Out #6 Green

Hot humid days and nights, 23" of rain in 9 weeks and a lack of air movement over the surface of this small green weakened the grass to such a degree that it no longer can tolerant normal golfing traffic or mowing without thinning out.

An article in the Wall Street Journal, The Ugly Summer of 2010, by John Paul Newport explains why this occurs. "Grass does have a mechanism to cool itself. It's called evapotranspiration and is analogous to perspiration. The roots draw up water from the soil and it evaporates through the plant's leaves, dissipating heat. But when greens are scalped to a quarter-inch, an eighth of an inch and even shorter, the leaf surface available for transpiration declines."
"Prolonged heat causes other problems. One is that root systems shrink, sometimes to within a half-inch of the surface, reducing the amount of water drawn up to the top. Humidity and heavy rain make things even worse. Humidity retards evaporation, while soggy soil stays hot longer than dry soil does. Puddles and saturated soil also create barriers that prevent needed oxygen from getting to the roots. Even when the combination of these factors doesn't kill bentgrass and poa annua outright, it weakens the turf significantly and renders greens more susceptible to fungus and disease."
"When hot weather hits bentgrass courses, course superintendents raise mowing heights. That yields more leaf surface and improves evapotranspiration but can slow down putts by a foot or more on the Stimpmeter, which measures green speed. "Better slow grass than no grass" is a mantra among greenkeepers, but the pressure from golfers to keep the greens rolling fast is relentless.
We have raised the mowing height on #6 to aid in its recovery and have roped off the front of the green to divert traffic away from its bottleneck approach.

First Products, AERA-vator Seeder with Long Tines

The extra long tines provide a big enough niche for bent grass seeding and germination even in a good stand of existing poa/bent. Once germination is seen, Velocity can be applied to eliminate poa seedlings and a significant amount of the current poa stand. It would be great to start this process now, especially in areas that were flooded and have little or no live turf.

Dead Poa Renders Opportunity for Bent Grass Establishment

Constant flooding leads to dead turf. It's always hard to see your turf die, but with death, mostly poa annua, comes opportunity to increase our fairway bent grass population. Early to mid August in Wisconsin is an excellent time for interseeding bent grass and getting excellent germination results. Poa that does germinate with the bent can be eradicated with the poa control Velocity. We will first need to vent the soils and relieve compaction with a Toro-ProCore 72 Soil Reliever with solid tines than Seed with

First Products AERA-vator seeder which has over 100 2" spikes on each of its 6 vibrating drums which make excellent niche's in the soil for seed germination. We will test out the process on the Little Links, if approved, we will move on to the fairways.

This brings to mind one of John Wooden's famous quotes, and he had many, "Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." We could not save stressed poa annua but we can seed in more stress tolerant bent grass. Thanks John for the direction, let's get to it!

Help I'm Drowning! If Only Turf Grass Roots Could Talk

Drown: To kill by submerging under water. To die under water of suffocation. We sliced the fwys shown to get oxygen to the roots and dry the soils out. Yes this caused small brown spots at the slice area but it will prevent larger dead areas of turf in the next few weeks. A minor disruption for a major gain. Hard to understand this preventive management practice until you see turf die right before your eyes on a sunny, breezy day.

Turf Grass Roots Need Equal Amounts of Air and Water to Prosper

Too much water, from constant rains, saturates the soil and pushes the air right out of the ground which creates a very unhealthy situation for the turfgrass roots. Turf roots need an equal amount of air and water to grow properly, when saturated conditions persist, the roots die back and consequently the grass can no longer take routine foot or vehicle traffic without thinning out. The month of June, with its nearly 11" of rain, created this anaerobic (without oxygen) condition in the soil beneath our turf and has caused some thinning, particularly in some of our new fairway areas adjacent to fairway sand bunkers. We have flagged some of these areas off so golf car traffic and mowing vehicles stay off them until recovery is achieved. We will use special equipment that will relieve compaction in these areas and allow a pathway for air to reenter the soil. As the turf and soil in these areas mature the wear will be less of an issue.

American Ingenuity Keeps Ponds Free of Algae

At the end of each year we evaluate our performance on how we manage the golf course from a quality stand point and an efficiency point. Several years ago we wanted to become more efficient with our application of algae and pond weed control products to our ponds it was just taking too long to apply products to our 11 ponds which total out to 5.6 acres of surface water. What we came up with, to cut the time in half, was a flat bottom boat with a gasoline powered trash pump mounted on board to pump water out of the pond into a short hose attached to our applicator gun. On the hose we have a T hose adapter which connects to a flow control value and a 5 gallon pail of control product. The boat is powered by a small trolling motor and we have a home made boat trailer to get it from pond to pond. It works great and the credit for the idea and putting it together belongs to Mark Mejchar pictured in the boat making the application and John Niemiec our Equip. Tech.