Dave’s Diary – 10th March 2017

Another month has flown by and we are now hopefully in the final stages of what has been a very weird summer. This past month has been no different with plenty on to keep us busy and hopefully put us into a good position heading into the major golf season.

 

Clubhouse Surrounds

The clubhouse surrounds are now into the grow in phase and only 2 weeks in we are starting to see great results with the turf developing strong new roots and over the next couple of weeks we should start to see it spread. In the end this was a big job as we brought in a lot of sand to build the levels up to match the existing height of the path. At the initial planting its critical to keep the area wet as any loss of moisture will result in the loss of the turf, at first the turf does appear to die off but providing it remains wet it bounces back generally within a week of planting. Once the plant established roots we applied a pelletised chicken manure plus a little old fashioned Super phosphate to really give it a kick. As the turf starts to take we have begun reducing our irrigation run times and will begin alternating our fertiliser applications each week between a granular focusing on growth and a spray application focusing on plant health and root development.  Due to the heavy irrigation we have experienced a washout where the water feeds of the mounding down into the green surrounds. This area at the moment poses no real concern for turf growth as the mounding will be seeded with rye grass once we complete the next stage of our proposal – the 9th green.

Crabgrass

At present the crabgrass in the greens has become very noticeable in the past couple of weeks, for the majority of summer the crabgrass has been present but has been kept under control partly because of the weather. With only one chemical available to treat crabgrass in bent the herbicide DSMA can also have an adverse effect on bent greens so timing of the application is critical. As this is my first summer and still learning what the greens can handle I was a little hesitant to spray something that could put the greens under a huge amount of stress. As the weather heated up over the past couple of weeks the crabgrass exploded in size and left us with no real choice but to bite the bullet and begin our program to eradicate it even though it is towards the end of its life cycle. Due to the effect DSMA can have on bent we will be spraying the greens every 7 days at half rate over multiple applications.

Fairways

Just as the fairways were looking good we go and destroy them again.. This will be our final grooming of fairways before we head into the winter months. Historically March has always been the best weather for growth, with cooler night time temps and increased moisture retention we usually experience a large flush of growth leading into late April. By giving the fairways an aggressive groom at this time of year we should experience the flush of growth to occur as the fairways are recovering and with the addition of growth regulators we are hoping to compact the growth habit leading into the cooler months.  Once grooming is completed next week a pre emergent herbicide will be applied to all fairways to combat the emergence of Poa (wintergrass) which likes to appear around April/May

Irrigation

Even though last winter was  very we wet we experienced some extremely wet and boggy patches around the course. As the days are getting shorter and we are retaining more moisture we have already begun to reduce our irrigation to keep the profile as dry as possible leading into the wetter months. over the next couple of weeks we will be simply turning off the irrigation in some parts to allow the profile to fully dry before receiving our first real rains for the season. Even though we might experience a little bit of short term dry patch these areas should benefit from it come the middle of winter.

 

Upcoming Tasks & Major Maintenance

All greens to receive granular dolomite application.

2x grooming of greens

Completion of fairway grooming

Foliar application to fairways including the growth regulator Primo Maxx

Fertiliser Application to rough focusing on areas with poor fairway definition.

Pre emergent application to fairways, tees and rough for the emergence of Poa

Spray and whip bunker edges

Commence fortnightly greens dusting program leading into winter season.

Conduct soil testing on greens