Spring is here..kind of

This week marked the first of spring, but it sure doesn't feel like it. With expected snow and freezing rain we have held off on course clean up until next week. The golf course has wintered relatively well considering the extreme winter that the London area experienced. All of the snow has melted with the exception of some in the bunkers and very low lying areas. The turf looks good in the treated areas for the most part. The fungicide that we have traditionally used for snow mould protection on fairways (Quintozene) has been removed from the market by the regulatory agencies of Canada (PMRA). With this on the horizon, we decided to use a couple of different products in order to make a more educated decision for our next winter protection applications. The newer products are of a more precise and advanced technology. These products are a blend of fungicides that have multiple modes of action. This means that they are protecting the turf grass in multiple ways. The advantage to this technology is that if one mode of action fails under certain environmental conditions, protection is still there in other forms. This proved to be very effective here at Highland this winter. The fairways that we used the old technology on have a moderate amount of snow mould damage on them. The fairways that the new technology was applied to are in considerably better shape with minimal to no disease infection.

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The Practice Range Tee

Last fall we utilized a “new to us” method of revitilization for our practice tee. Our contractor TDS, fraize mowed the surface of the tee to remove organic matter as well at to aid in leveling. The tee was then aerified and seeded to a new variety of creeping rye grass. We chose this type of turf grass as research shows rapid recovery and a low growth habit. We were able to get some great growth in the fall, but the tee is still not ready for traffic and full use. The plan is to utilize the mats until growth has filled in some of the voids etc. We will then begin to slowly set up hitting areas on the grass tee. For a while we will alternate between grass and the mats with a 50/50 ratio of use. Once the grass tee is established and is in adequate recovery mode, the practice areas will be back to normal. As always our membership’s patience is appreciated as we try to improve these areas for use.

Cultural Greens Maintenance...

With the cooler temperatures this week, we will be performing some all important greens maintenance procedures. Monday evening (after the outside event) we will be doing a light grooming on both our greens and collars. This task will help to reduce the amount of lateral growth, therefore standing up the plants (for a better cut) and smoothing out the surfaces. Following the grooming we will be dry mowing all areas tonight to help clean up the debris. Tuesday morning we will be applying our biweekly light topdressing prior to play. Once the sand has dried, we will use our cocoa matt to drag the sand into both the canopy and the shallow grooming channels created by tonight's procedure. These practices in conjunction help to create a smooth, firm and healthy surface to putt on.

Spring Greens Aeration...a week later!

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...

HIGHLAND CC GROUNDS

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