Green Speed: Please Consider the Following:

This week, I was fortunate to attend a John Deere Equipment "seminar" on the campus of Duke University in Durham, NC.  The "seminar" was interesting and involved testing some prototype equipment as well as touring the production facility there in Raleigh.  As often happens at these type of events, I met another superintendent and blogger and over a couple of beers after dinner one evening, we shared some war stories.  While we were chatting, he was receiving emails on his smart phone concerning a recent blog post he crafted on green speed.  I was interested to see what post had generated so much "buzz" from his membership, and he was kind enough to share.

Below is a link to his post, and it answered several questions about stimp meters, posting daily speed readings,  and general green speed issues quite well, so I thought I would share it with our membership.

Rub of the Green: Green Speed: Please Consider the Following:

Regular rain and cool weather - great for growing all kinds of things -

Finally, September is here and with it seemingly normal weather.  A stretch of humidity, rain and heat has been followed by cooler nights and mild days.  This type of pattern has been GREAT to grow all kinds of things.  Most noticably seed and dollar spot.  Many areas around the course have been slit seeded to repair damage either from the Jamie Farr or the drought (or both!)  and these areas have enjoyed perfect grass-growing conditions.

Please make your best efforts to play these areas as ground under repair and keep carts out as much as possible to give it the best chance of continuing to fill in.  The perfect fall weather and a little fertilizer should have these areas green again in no time. 

The other thing growing like a weed on the course right now is Dollar Spot.  This not-so-friendly fungus has littered our tees with unsightly little white spots.  With the recent rains, it has been difficult to get the sprayer out on the course.  We were at the tail-end of some chemical protection and the perfect conditions caused a little outbreak.  Fortunately, the rain and wind ceased just long enough for us to spray, so we shouldn't see any increase in disease for the near future.  With a little fertilizer and continued diligence, the spots will soon disappear.  Fortunately, dollar spot is more unsightly than super destructive as long as we remain alert.

Fuzzy, white mycelium are very noticable in the morning dew.

Seeing spots?

This "stripe" down the middle of #11 tee is particularly bad.  A small error in our last spray application left the middle of the tee unprotected.  You could imagine what the tees would look like if we didn't spray.

 

 As the fall continues, our small remaining staff will continue to seed, repair, and do whatever necessary to get our course back into great condition before good growing weather subsides.  Once we've done what we can to plant sod and seed, we will focus on our fall cultural program.  Keep your eyes peeled for the deep-tine on fairways in the next couple of weeks.  As usual, we will follow with deep de-thatching.  For those that have been asking, greens aeration will be October 1st.   More details when we get closer.