Grounds Report
Published on 9th February 2023 in Course News
They say time flies when you’re having fun, well we must be having fun as January has been and gone in the blink of an eye.
January has kept us busy with the usual joys of summer along with the opening of the 13th green – to date the green is handling the traffic well and we would like to remind players to continue repairing ball marks. The ropes will stay at the front of the green a little longer as we want to stop players cutting between the bunker and the green. As a reminder these ropes are immovable objects and if they interfere with your stance or swing, take free relief. If playing a shot, you hit a rope or stake, you have the option of replaying the stroke if you want.
Coming up this month we will commence our poa management program. The word “poa” is a hot topic at every golf club. The word “poa” is short for poa annua or wintergrass as its also commonly known, poa is an annual grass that thrives over the winter months. Out on the golf course we start to see conditions favour germination around early March and then start to see it transition out towards the middle of November.
On greens conditions suit poa throughout the year, Bent grass which we have on our greens is classed as a C3 grass meaning its adapted to cool season conditions our fairways and tees. are classed as C4 grasses which are adapted to warmer season growing conditions. For cool season varieties to grow outside of their optimum growing conditions regular nutritional inputs along with abundance of moisture creates a perfect environment for poa to co-exist within the bent surface through out the year.
In our C4 surfaces we can apply both pre-emergent and post emergent herbicides to control poa, unfortunately due to both poa and bent grass being in the same family (C3 grasses) these chemicals will severely impact both species. On the market there are a few chemicals that we can use on bent, they are a mixture of both herbicides and PGR (plant growth regulators). The latest to hit the market is a chemical named poa cure, several Perth courses are currently using this with great results although the only negative is the ridiculous price tag that comes with it – approx. $24k for 1 full treatment on 18 greens… so we might just dabble with it on 1-2 of our greens to see how it goes.
In the meantime, we will turn to a chemical we have used in the past which worked well, too well in the end and took a lot of the poa out a little too quickly leaving greens bumpy and sparse. This year we will look towards more of a very slow and gradual approach to allow the bent to close in on the poa and slowly creep over in an effort to reduce the scarring and bare areas we experienced a few years back.
What should you expect to see? Hopefully good results! Approximately 10-14 days post application we will start to see yellowing in the poa and as time progresses we will start to see the poa plant shrinking in size and with the slow gradual approach we are wanting to see that bent closing in, shrinking the poa to the point it eventually grows over it. The greens with poa may look a little discoloured but masking this with regular fertiliser applications will hopefully keep things looking somewhat normal to the naked eye. Dusting of greens with sand will increase from fortnightly to weekly to ensure we don’t loose our smooth surfaces and fill in any indentations from the poa shrinking.
Last winter we were expecting it to be a bad winter in terms of poa population, the winter and spring of 2021 we had continual downtime with our sprayer – sourcing parts and repairs had us pulling our hair out with frustration. Timing of chemical applications is critical and with the sprayer going down we were unable to apply any growth regulators to control the plant from producing seed head. Subsequently come April/May of last year we had the population boom and the poa took off which was particularly noticeable in the 10th green. Since then, we have replaced our spraying unit and we head into the cooler months in a much stronger position.
As for the word “poa” being a bit of a buzz word amongst golf clubs particularly during winter, the past 6 US opens have been held on courses with 100% poa annua greens – which creates the argument, is it really that bad?
Moving away from poa for now… and onto Kikuyu, Bevin Martin has once again been busy spraying around green collars and tees. On the tee tops themselves the spraying has worked really well with no Kikuyu present. Some scarring still remains but another recent coring of tees has helped top-dress these areas out – The tees were starting to look good prior to this but we can assure they will look even better coming into the latter part of the summer. DSMA has now been applied around green surrounds to target crabgrass, this will yellow off and highlight the kikuyu so spraying will commence on these areas over the coming weeks. Norm Ellery continues his quest for Parramatta control and is well and truly winning this battle. From where we were 6yrs ago to now is a real credit to Norm and his ongoing dedication.
Our kikuyu program for fairways will commence again in late March. Over the past 4 weeks we have started to see a lot of kikuyu appear back in the fairways. This was expected but the good news is that its very patchy and thin, we no longer have the large thicker patches meaning that when we spray it again this year we wont be left with unsightly bare areas. Our aim for kikuyu is to reduce the amount each year to the point it becomes nonexistent. We are confident that we will win this battle with the goal to have our fairways, tees, and green approaches to be clear of Kikuyu within the next 2 years. Our attention will then turn to areas in the rough and passive area’s.
For the remainder of summer it will be business as usual for us, unfortunately recent electrical faults with our automatic control of the bore and low water in the dam we missed half of day of irrigation on our nursery and that was enough to cook the lower section along with the 11th blue tee. We were preparing the lower section of our nursery for a green replacement set for March. We will no longer but doing a green but we have adequate turf for any patching jobs which we usually hold out in doing until March/April when the weather is a little kinder to freshly laid bent.
Until next month, enjoy your golf!
Dave Brennan
Course Superintendent.