Course Conditions

It’s been a busy couple weeks for us at the Maintenance Department.

Last week we completed a course wide fertilizer and pre-emergent herbicide application.  This product will help control summer weeds and provide a slow feeding of the turf through late July to early August.

We also continue to lightly topdress greens bi-weekly or weekly depending on the growth of the turf.  The greens were growing at a rapid rate for a few weeks following aerification.  Daily growth has leveled off to ‘normal’ levels.  We have roughly 6 weeks left of decent bentgrass weather (on average).  We are going to be cautious and try to drive more roots deep before we head into the summer stretch.  The roots are healthy but not as deep as they were this time last year due the fall through spring rains.  When excess moisture is in the soil, roots don’t have to grow and ‘search’ for water.  Shorter roots make it a much greater challenge for the plant to handle stress (mowing, rolling, weather, etc).

It looks like we might be falling back into a dry stretch again.  Long term forecasts predicted it would be a dry year this year.  Current river flows are 39 CFS at Comfort and 79 CFS at Spring Branch.  These are the two gauges our river water permits are tied to and dictate our ability to pump water for irrigation purposes.  The flow rates vary from month to month and currently do not allow us to divert water from the river.  With that, we will be selectively using the water features on 5 and 12 (tournaments and special events).  These two water features need supplemental water due to their length of run and water loss through the ground and evaporation.  They are lined in select areas to minimize the water loss but liners do not prevent all water loss.

Finally, we seeded the west putting green (the green behind the west zoysia tee) yesterday.  Irrigation will be running every hour on the hour from 7:00AM until 6:00PM for 12 minutes each hour (i.e. 7:00 – 7:12, 8:00 – 8:12, etc.)  The irrigation heads do come close to reaching the back of the west tee.  Please use caution when parking or using the west tee.  Our plan is to keep it open but if it becomes an issue we will close it for a few weeks while irrigation is running to germinate the seed.