Pay Me Now or Pay Later

Chicken Pox?  Dollar Spot Fungus?  Nope, ball marks on our 11th green.  Like we do every few weeks, our staff went and plugged out ball marks on the 11th green and filled them with soil  and seed.  The 11th green is only 2+ years old and the first year we opened it, it was as hard as a rock and tough to hold.  Now that it is maturing a bit and accumulating some thatch and organic matter, ball marks have been a problem.  With the majority of the golfers playing it at 150 yards, it is hit quite often and ball marks are left behind.  It is not uncommon for us to find 20-40 unrepaired marks on a weekend morning.  So, we are faced with brown spots all over the green or doing it this way and having sand dots all over.  While they will eventually heal, it is a playability issue along with an etiquette issue.  It makes our golf course look like a public course.  I have always said, it takes 5 seconds to fix a ball mark or you can wait a month or two for it to heal.

Nice Week for Maintenance

Now that the Arcola Cup is behind us, we have 2 weeks until our next big event and this was the perfect week to heavily topdress greens, approaches and chipping areas.  Our plan with the approaches are to let the sand sit for the week before mowing again on Friday and hopefully we get the thunderstorms they are predicting today to help wash it in.  On the greens, we are using our old greens mowers to mow for a few days as the sand will dull the mowers and this way we will protect our good greens mowers.  The speeds will slow a bit as the mowers are only picking sand and not cutting any grass so by the weekend we will be much better.

Rain Is Over, Start Preparing for the Arcola Cup

Now that the heavy rain and humidity are almost behind us, we turn our attention to prepping for the Arcola Cup this Friday.  Today we are using tow behind blowers to help dry the green surfaces so we can start double cutting.  With the high humidity and rains the past few days, our normal green speeds of 12 are no more now that the greens are lush and soft.  We will be getting green speeds back to normal in the next few days but we have to be careful that we do not stress them out as they are still soft.

Bluestem Plugging

Today the maintenance staff planted 600 little bluestem plugs in native areas, ditch banks and bunker edges.  These are small native grasses that will accent these areas, and also do not create the playability issues we are facing right now with our new fescue sod.

Venting Greens This Week

This will be the 2nd time in the last 2 weeks that we have vented greens.  Normally we do this every 2-3 weeks but with our busy tournament schedule this season, we have had to push them off.  With the Arcola Cup on the 18th and a busy August, we will probably do them again once before the August Clambake and the AJGA tournament the week of August 11th.   This process allows gas exchange in the soil and oxygen into the root zone.

The Difference Between Seeded Fescue and Sodded Fescue

In the center of this picture, you will see where we sodded a tree stump in the native area on #4 hillside.  This entire area was killed and seeded several years ago and you will see how the area around the sod is thin and playable, yet the sod is thick.  This too will thin out with lack of rainfall, heat and the use of growth regulators/herbicides.  Until then, we must be patient and we will do what we can to make the areas playable in the meantime.  Again, the benefits far outweigh the negatives.

Not All Native Area Weeds Are Bad

This is milkweed, located to the left of the entrance driveway.  While it is a weed, it does produce flowers and they are beneficial to monarch butterflies.  We usually leave these alone and let them flourish.