Nation Wide Heat, Flooding, and Drought

I came across this article today on the Golf Course Superintendents website that addresses the heat, drought, and flooding and unusual weather that has struck the nation over the past couple of years.  While we had great turf growing conditions last year, the course was not as lucky this year.

http://www.gcsaa.org/Newsroom/News-Releases/2011/July/Persistent-heat%2C-drought-and-flooding-strain-golf-courses-nationally.aspx

To much of a good thing

disease issues on 7 fairway

My last few posts have focused around all the rain that Mother Nature has been supplying the golf course, but we have had to much of a good thing.  Our fairways are suffering from the effects of to much water and extreme heat and humidity.  Our issues began when there a was standing water on the golf course from the 5" of rain we received two weeks ago, and then the air temperatures soared to around 100 degrees. The high temperature in effect caused the standing water to get hot enough to overheat and kill the turf.  Then once the humidity began to rise from our normal 15 percent to the upper 60's the disease issues began to emerge.

disease pressure in 10 approach

We are doing everything possible to get these dead areas in the fairways back, from spiking to increase air and water movement, to overseeding with ryegrass to help fill in the areas as quickly as possible.  As long as Mother nature cooperates for the next couple of weeks we should see a full recovery just in time for some great late summer golf.

The dreaded afternoon thumderstorm

Storm that dropped 1.25" of rain on the course

Over the past week we have had heavy rains hit the golf course every afternoon. 0.6" of rain fell Wednesday night, followed by 0.64" Thursday, 1.25" Friday, 0.26" Saturday, 0.36"Sunday, and 0.28" Monday night. 

18 greenside bunkers washed out after 1.25" rain

18 greenside bunkers after repair

The crew has had to repair bunker washouts every day for the last 6 days. This is a long and very physically demanding process that consists of pushing the washed out sand from the bottom of the bunker back onto the face of the bunker. Then the crew works on proper sand depth and compaction. The final step is to hand rakes all the edges and spin the bunker to smooth out the plow marks. The average bunker will take about 30 minutes to fix with two workers, with 68 bunkers, the process can take about 70 man hours to complete. Having to do this 6 times in the last 6 days has been tough on the maintenance crew (420 hours). If you happen to see anyone from the maintenance staff on the course please make sure to thank them for all of there hard work to keep the bunkers in playable condition this last week.

3 fairway

3 fairway in late April 2011

3 fairway in mid June

While 3 fairways turf conditions are not at an acceptable level we have seen improvement over the past 30 days.  Over the winter we experienced a large area of turf loss about 250 yards from the green due to a multitude of reasons, dry winter, extreme cold temperatures, hard clay soils, high salt levels, southern facing slope.  This areas was large enough that the only way we could get turf in this area again was to aggressively treat the soil with gypsum to help aid in the flushing of salts from the soil, overseed with ryegrass, fertilize, water, and play the waiting game.  We will continue to aggressively nurse this area back to health and we should see even more improvement over the next couple of weeks.