Summer Update

Well my goal of keeping the blog updated were clearly too lofty. We are going to reset and try for once a month. With that being said, I will give a brief rundown of how the course is now.

Collar update- Our aerate, mushroom compost, seed operation this spring on the collars was

a huge success. By mid may, we had the collars back to 95% with just a few thin areas on the worst collars. We were able to then shave them down to the appropriate height of cut and get them smooth enough to be able to putt. We also extended the collar in front of the green about 12-15’ giving the opportunity to play it short and roll it on when the greens are firm. This area still needs to some attention to give the true firmness we desire. We will address that during our summer greens aerification and hopefully have them firmed up for member guest. The next phase of our collar work will be to shrink the collars from 48” to 24”. We are going to achieve this by pushing the greens out 24”, this will give us a much tighter and uniform look. We are hoping to have all of this accomplished by member guest in October. Right of the blue line would become green

Fairway update- for the most part fairways are in good condition. Annual Bluegrass Weevils (ABW’s) hit us in June causing some burnout areas on 7, 11, 13, and 14. ABW’s are the number one pest in the mid-Atlantic and very difficult to control. They typically only cause damage to Poa, populations have to be extremely high to cause damage to bentgrass. The Adult ABW’s feed on the Poa and lay their eggs inside the leaf sheath, the eggs hatch and larvae eat their way out killing the plant. The challenge in control is there is not a preventative insecticide you can put down prior to infestation. The eggs and larvae are easier to control but harder to get the product into contact since there in the plant. The adults

are harder to kill but easier to get contact. Every chemical company is working on ABW solutions with new products coming out every year. We used one of the new products this spring on the greens, and on the fairways when we identified the damage, it worked extremely well and will be in rotation in the future. The timing is challenging because you have to have active adults on the turf before you spray, we got the time correct on greens but missed it by about a week on the fairways. I have noted the change for next year and should have them on lock in the future. We seeded the damaged areas but since our weed pre-emergent was Adult ABW

already down that operation was not successful. We will aerate and

seed these areas again soon. Some tees were also affected by the ABW’s.

Greens Update- Greens are doing extremely well this year outside of some irrigation issues we had in June on greens 14 and 17 causing some wilt stress. We are continually seeding these areas and they should fully recover with aerification next month. I am currently walking out a three-year program on the greens to get the profile fully recovered and performing to a more optimal level. In 2020 the greens were heavily compacted, water

would not penetrate the surface, and the profile was pretty much sealed off with a lot of thatch. 2021 was focused on recovering the surface, establishing healthy turf and reducing thatch. In 2022 our focus is on increasing water infiltration, growing deeper roots, and pushing the bent to outcompete the poa. 2023’s focus is going to be on increasing bentrgass

populations, reducing grain, better greens speed and roll. So far, we are achieving each of our goals, this summer’s aerification, which is scheduled for August 8-10th, is the next step in our water infiltration program. We are using a 7” coring tine that pulls a ½” core but has an outside diameter of ¾” leaving a large channel for sand to go down the full 7”. The spacing is wider than we normally use to balance surface disruption, we should have them fully recovered in the typical 2-week period.

Right now, we are conducting irrigation audits across the course to make sure all systems are functioning optimally. We have fixed over 3 Summer aerification tine

dozen heads in the fairways and more than a dozen on greens. Our last

are to check is the tee heads which we will hopefully complete this week. The clock is ticking down on summer and we have had great weather so far. We just need to get through the next few weeks and we will be golden.