Course Update

57 degrees this morning and my jaw is starting to hurt from smiling so much. The recovery over the past week after the heat wave is slowly beginning. The turf seems to leave us much faster then it returns but new shoots and germinating seed are beginning to appear in many of the struggling areas. The greens and struggling fairway areas were all vented last Monday and Tuesday and weekly foliar applications of fertilizer have been applied to help all the new seedlings and emerging shoots gain ground while the weather remains normal. Areas on greens that are not filling in are being plugged out using our nursery green and large fairway areas have been seeded for a second time. The greens will be dry-ject aerated on Monday August 5th. This process uses high pressure water jets to inject sand into the greens to the tune of around 28,000 pounds with virtually no waste and good playability after the process is complete. The dry-ject is a very safe and golfer friendly way of opening up the rootzone to allow oxygen to the roots and increase the greens ability to move water off the green surface. The dry-ject also firms the surface of the greens and allows for dilution of the thatch layer. The greens will be over-seeded following the dry-ject with two bentgrass varieties, 007 and Crystal Blue Links. 007 is the variety that our nursery greens is comprised of and if anyone has walked on the nursery you can see how great of a putting surface 007 provides. Crystal Blue Links is a new variety of bentgrass that only needs 4 hours of sunlight to grow which will be a great help on our shady greens. The same seed combination will be sued again after our big core-aeration at the end of September.

First Tee Monday Morning