Where Did the Summer Go?

It's hard to believe that as I am sitting here writing this that it is the last regular day of work for the season for all my summer students. Summer flew by just like it always seems to. I guess that just means that we are that busy around here! It was a great and successful summer though. We have accomplished a lot on the golf course and business is significantly up. 

Unfortunately it has been a while since my last post so I have a lot to update you on. The weather has overall been pretty great for us this summer. There was a lot of very warm weather and not a lot of rainy days. That being said; weather like that brings on its challenges. The turf experienced a lot of stress this summer from high temperatures and drying out. Localized dry spot was very common this summer. A localized dry spot is basically an area that can not be wet or is considered hydro-phobic. To deal with this condition we have a few tools. Most commonly we use a wetting agent which helps to alter the soil chemistry to either allow the soil to take in and hold water or push water through the soil profile. Another common procedure that we do is hand-watering. When we hand water we go out with a hose and soak down and puddle the dry area a few times to really help to push the water down and saturate the area. 

Examples of our localized dry spot

Bunker maintenance was one of our top priorities once our students had started. All greenside bunkers were edged again this season and 14 of these bunkers also had new sand added to them to improve sand quality and depths.

A freshly edged bunker

A bunker with new sand added to it

We did see the dreaded Take-all Patch disease that I am always talking about sporadically throughout the summer but it was a non-issue as we are so used to it now that our management program seems to be working very well.

Take-all Patch

This week we just recently completed our annual fall greens aeration. The greens are recovering nicely and should be putting great once again in the next couple days. 

A green being aerated

How the greens look after aeration

For the fall we have a lot of things planned. We will be aerating the tee boxes. We are planning to totally overseed all weak fairway areas once more with Alkaligrass. After we seed certain areas we will be putting ropes up to keep carts off of these areas. The ropes will help to keep traffic off of these areas and will as a result allow the new seed the chance to establish. We will be building and growing in our new bentgrass sod nursery. And then of course we will be performing our normal fall shut down procedures such as fungicide applications, irrigation blowout, fairway aeration, tarping, fencing, etc. 

We are hoping to have a very successful fall and hope that Mother Nature continues to be good to us to allow the golf season to keep going a little longer!

On a side note my wife and I are pleased to announce that on July 24th we welcomed our first child into the world. His name is William David Seibel.