It Has Been A Long Winter

There is no question that this has been a long winter.  We had some decent weather right before Christmas to start getting ready to remove the bunker sand from some of our newer bunkers but since, we have had cold and snowy weather.  We have not gotten any significant work done on the course this winter because we have been dealing with snow cover or frozen ground for almost 2 months.  Come this spring we will be extremely busy getting all the little projects done that we were hoping to get done this winter.
How healthy will our turf be come spring?  That leaves a lot to be determined over the next few weeks.  We had some very iffy weather back in January where we had rain and light snow and 50 degrees followed by a temperature drop of over 45 degrees in almost 12 hours.  All the puddles that sat on greens from the rain the day before froze solidly when temps did not get out of the teens for a few days.  Plants can die if they take up water and then freeze and we are hoping that was not the case.  We will be keeping an eye on turf when the snow starts to melt to see how we fared this winter on greens.  Snow mold is going to be another issue and I am confident our greens and tees will be fine, but our fairways and roughs will most likely have snow mold with the prolonged snow cover.  This is more of an unsightly spring disease and usually grows out come May when temperatures start to warm up and grass can start growing normally.  Following a difficult winter like it has been, we can only hope for a warm and dry spring to allow grass to start growing normally.  As snow melts and we can get out to monitor turf, we will update our findings on the blog.