Here at Highland we treat our greens, tees and fairways with a winter protection fungicide. The rough on the property is far to vast to treat with these rather costly fungicides. Therefore every spring we experience rather heavy snow mould infection in the rough. Above is a picture of the tee bank on #15. On the left you can see where the fungicide was applied and protected (for the tee surface). On the right is the result of severe disease infection on unprotected turfgrass. The rough will come back once the warmer temperatures arrive and some air and sunshine get down to the plants. But it is definitely set back from the treated areas.
A week has passed since our annual spring greens aeration. We have had a mixed bag of weather, hot, dry, cold, wet and even frost! These conditions make it challenging to aid in healing, but with the more recent consistent warm temperatures we are seeing solid recovery. We were fortunate to have decent weather to complete the process on time, allowing us to fill all the holes created by the 1/2” hollow tines. As there are some minor depressions within some of the holes we will be beginning our bi-weekly topdressing program early next week. Our team is mowing and rolling our greens daily, while slowly lowering our height of cut to our summer norm. We all know that spring cultural practices are not popular among golfers, but these all important tasks are the building blocks for high performance greens conditions throughout the heart of the golf season. Check out this video produced by the USGA on Aerations effect on putting...
Are we still headed for an April 15 opening?
ReplyDeleteUnless the weather takes a dramatic turn for the better, we would be pushing it to open by the 15th. We still have snow on 50% of our greens covers. Please check in with the blog to see forecasted opening dates...
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