The road to recovery

Despite all the activities going on in the grounds department these days, I would like to start with an excuse.  I haven't blogged since tournament week as I've been a little distracted by the birth of my first child.  On Wednesday, July 24th at 6:30 pm my wife Catlynn gave birth to an 8 lb 1 oz little girl named Lyla Symmes Salois.  Mom and baby are both doing great and I am extremely thrilled to start a new chapter in my life.

1 Day old Lyla

Touchdown!!

On a less happy note, I would like to copy and paste a preview of the August newsletter to the members.  I have written about dead grass for the last several weeks and I think this will be the last of it.  We have begun to travel down the road to recovery and that's what we will talk about for the next few months.  Mother Nature seems to be cooperating with the unseasonably cool and pleasant August, so it's onward and upward from here.  Quite frankly I'm sick to my stomach about course conditions right now, but there's no sense crying over spilled milk at this point.  All we can do is move forward and make the best out of it.  Below is my analog newsletter preview for August.

August 2013 Highlander

With the Marathon Classic behind us, the course you got back after the tournament is not the same course you had before.  Our mild summer turned severe at just the right time to do some significant damage to our fairways.  Low areas, poorly drained areas, and high cart traffic areas with high amounts of Poa annua have suffered.

As you all know, we had 18 days of rain and saturation leading up to the Marathon Classic.  The course was very wet, and standing water remained in some areas for weeks despite our best efforts to remove it.  There are four main components that combined to create the damage you see.

1.      1.  Mower and Cart Damage – Weeks of rain prevented us from mowing some areas for extended periods.  While the course was still a little wet, we were forced to throw our large fairway mowers back out to get the fairways back down to their proper height.  Also, while the course was still quite wet, we allowed carts.  When wet and soft areas are driven on or mowed, the stress on the plant is magnified.  Root systems are compacted, shifted, and the short-rooted Poa annua plant is weakened.  Once the weather turned from cold and wet to hot and humid, the weakest plants began to simply melt away.

2.      2.  Fungal Pressure – As always, the hot and humid conditions turned the wet golf course into a large “petri dish” that fungus loves to grow on.  Every year, we spray a multitude of chemicals to prevent fungal disease, but when conditions are so perfect for development, even the best chemicals will only control a percentage of the total infection.  Also, when plants are already weakened by mechanical damage and heat, the plants become exponentially more susceptible to infection.  Most of the lost turf is not directly related to fungal disease, but it is a large contributor to an overall weakened stand of turf.

3.      3.  Water damage – Low areas of the property and the odd “duck ponds” were underwater for weeks.  While we did squeegee off water whenever possible, the turf in these areas just suffocated and rotted. Many of you commented in the days leading up to the tournament how the smell of rot pervaded the property.  If it was near death after the rain stopped, the heat pushed it over the edge.

4.      4.  Poa annua – Our fairways are 50%+ Poa annua.  As I’ve discussed on many occasions, Poa creates a lovely surface, but is a much weaker plant than bentgrass.  Poa is short rooted, more susceptible to disease, and much more prone to “checking out” in hot, humid conditions. 

If there is any upside to the poor fairway conditions, most of the turf lost is Poa annua and not the more desirable bentgrass.  We have been using chemicals in the spring and fall to help the bentgrass “outcompete” the Poa and slowly transition to a higher percentage of bentgrass in the fairways.  Mother Nature has decided to accelerate that process for us.  In the short-term, the normally carpet-like conditions in the fairways is compromised, but in the long-term, it will help us towards our goal of a more vigorous stand of bentgrass and less Poa annua in our fairways.  Many members like to ask me why Inverness is re-grassing the golf course, and our situation is a perfect example why.

The plan for recovery is simple.  Patience, fertilizer, seed, aerification and sod.  We will exhaust our nursery to sod as many completely dead areas as possible.  The small patches that still have bentgrass living in or around them will be given extra fertilizer and water to encourage growth.  Areas that are mostly just “thinned” will be scarified and seeded with bentgrass.  We want to encourage as much bentgrass growth as possible before the fall comes and the Poa annua will germinate naturally from our soil seed bank.  To help things along, we will begin deep-tine aerifying our fairways in August to get some much needed oxygen into the soil and relieve the extra compaction from all the traffic and wetness.

Overall, this really was a “perfect storm”.  All of the above pressures combined into one week of really bad growing conditions.  With a little time and a lot of effort, we will come out better and stronger for the future.  I thank you for your patience.