Turfgrass Melting Pot

Arriving at Hartefeld over a year ago and taking inventory, the turfgrass melting pot that exist across the property quickly became a top priority. This exists across the entire property, from greens and tees to fairways and native areas. The fairways particularly had a wide variety of turgrass species. These species were Perennial Ryegrass, Creeping Bentgrass, Poa annua and some Kentucky Bluegrass; the predominant species is Ryegrass. Managing a melting pot of turfgrass can be expensive, particularly managing a population of Bentgrass and Ryegrass in the same fairway. Each of these grasses have their own management nuances which doesn't make them favorable to populate the same turf stand. Poa annua being the easiest to control with an aggressive growth regulator program along with proper water management, we started there. We have had great success with our Poa erradication!

The next step was Creeping Bentgrass. This was going to be a bit more difficult. Our IPM and BMP programs developed to manage towards the P. Rye is also favorable to bentgrass. In order to eradicate our bentgrass we need to use specific herbicides and we need to use them when the bentgrass would be under stress, summer time. Last week we made the first of three herbicide applications to eradicate the bentgrass. This herbicide also controls several broadleaf and annual weeds, crabgrass is an example.

The pictures below are of 13 fairway. You can see the bentgrass has begun to decline after only 6 days. 13 and 17 fairways have the highest bentgrass populations, therefore will not visually be favorable, but playability will not be disrupted. We have overseeded these fairways last fall and will continue to overseed the worst areas of bentgrass decline through this entire process.

Close up of bentgrass decline from herbicide.

Photo of 13 fairway.

Pushing Roots!

The challenge for any turf manager on a golf course is building a strong root system. The more robust your root system, the healthier the plant. The issue with creating a robust system is the stresses we put our turfgrass under, traffic, low mowing heights, etc. is not conducive to a healthy root system. Since we can't take away these stresses, we do what we can to limit the severity through aerificaiton, golf traffic control and changing mowing and rolling patters. We also supplement the turf with different fertilizers, wetting agents and plant protectants, but more importantly we do our best to control the amount of water the turf is receiving. This has been especially difficult over the last few months. Scouting the properties today, I was very pleased to see with all the challenges we have faced this year our root systems are thriving.

Below is a photo of our root system. Usually the root depth is proportional to your top growth. This is obviously not the case here. Great job to our entire TEAM!!

Green speeds

The greens following yesterday's aerification are at 9'10" on the
stimpmeter. They are still really wet!

William Brown, CGCS
Regional Agronomist

Pegasus Golf Management

Sent from wireless device.

Green Venting

The minor greens aerificaiton went extremely well yesterday. We began punching holes at about 4:45am and finished the complete process at 3pm.

Over the last few weeks the rains have been relentless. I began noticing the first signs of wet wilt and stresses from the amount of moisture the greens were holding last Wednesday. Despite the rains, I continued our wetting agent applications in hopes to keep the profile as uniform as possible and help the excessive water move through the profile more efficiently. Utilizing wetting agents is just as important when you are receiving excessive rain as when you are dry. Despite our best efforts we needed to get more aggressive to help dry these greens out.

The minor aerification was done with the use of bayonet tines. These times look exactly like a bayonet at the end of a riffle. Utilizing this type of tine, allows us to make the greatest impact on the rootzone with minimal surface disruption. Our process for this aerification didn't stop after the holes were punched, we rolled the greens directly behind the aerifier and this morning and Thursday morning we will brush, cut and roll the greens. The greens look fantastic today! In a short while I will be stimping the greens and will post the results.

Rolling behind the aerificaiton.

Putting surface immediately following aerification and roll.

Cart Rules

Finally, back on the turf! There will be no restrictions for cart traffic today. Stay tuned for an update and photos of our greens venting today.

18 & 16 greens Dollar Spot

Dollar spot is one of those nuisance turfgrass diseases, very simar to
the common cold. By utilizing a strong IPM program we can keep this
disease to a minimum, but sometimes no matter what we do it shows it's
ugly face. This is the situation with 18 & 16 greens. We literally had
an explosion of dollar spot over night(pictured above).

Despite the look of these two greens, I have no concern. We were due
for our biweekly greens spray yesterday. We increased the amount of
curative plant protectant for these two greens along with the addition
of some fertlizer. As long as we can get the disease in check over the
next few days, thunderstorms and rain will make this a bit difficult,
we should see recovery by next week.

William Brown, CGCS
Regional Agronomist

Pegasus Golf Management

Sent from wireless device.

Saturated!!

The rain has been relenting this spring. As I have discussed before, it has made each day a challenge to continue to produce the course conditions we strive for. To date, the turf has held up extremely well, but I am beginning to see signs of stress from the lack of oxygen to our root systems. On Tuesday morning, beginning at 5:30am, we will begin solid tining the greens. We will be using a bayonet tine which creates very minimal surface disruption. The process will be completed by late morning, early afternoon. This process will allow us to increase the amount of oxygen the plant is currently receiving to ensure our greens do not begin to wet wilt.

When we purchased the new ProCore last August, we included an attachment that allows us to roll behind a solid tine aerification. This attachment ensures that putting surface remains smooth.
Look for photos on Tuesday morning as I will be posting an update as we are completing the aerification.

More Rain

Continued rain has forced us to restrict cart use to cart path only. We will not be able to issue Blue Flags until a reevaluation is completed around 11am. If the rain continues, this restrictions will remain in affect for the remainder of the day.

Mountain Branch USGA visit

We had a fantastic visit by the USGA at Mountain Branch yesterday. Despite a few thunderstorms we were able to get our full visit in. A lot of positive came out of our visit. Our reclamation work on the native areas have been paying off as we received a lot of positive feedback. Suggestions were made for continued applications and we are looking forward to experimenting. We have made leaps and bounds toward our Poa erradication in both greens and fairways. Our Prograss program initiated in late fall last year really paid off! Contuing with a Primo program and keeping fertility up will only further our success.

Mountain Branch has really come a long way in the last 8 months, roughs are getting full, fairways and tees are tightning up! Great job to the staff!

I am very much looking forward to the USGA at Hartefeld in 2 weeks. We have put a lot of work into Hartefeld. I am looking forward to having them see the changes.

New Equipment

Good morning! Good news, the equipment we have budgeted for this year to replace our aging fairway units will be arriving soon. We are in the final stages of leasing procedures! Looking forward to our new fairway units!

HUMIDITY!

If you are heading out today or have already arrived home from being outside, you probably will break or have already broken a good sweat. It is humidity! As I discussed in an earlier post, humidity is a cause of slower greens speeds. Just as we break a quick sweat from the humidity, so will the grass. With the high humidity, it makes it difficult for the grass to transpire, with the lack of transpiration comes a swelled leaf blade. This swelling is what causes the slower green speeds. Hopefully the humidity will break for us over the weekend, but until then, we will continue doing everything we can to keep green speeds on target.

Storms growing over the course!!

CRACKED!!!

This morning we got hit with the worst thunderstorm I have ever seen.  In a span of 10 minutes, we counted over 20 cloud to ground lightning strikes that hit the golf course(Broad Run).  A bit of a scary moment, as I was making my way through the property a pole directly next to my truck was hit by lightning and tracked onto my truck! My ears are still ringing from the strike!  The storm dumped over 1" of rain, but the lightning damage is what really concerns me.  We are still taking inventory on strikes that hit the course(Broad Run).

Playing catchup!

The rain is done for now! With almost 2 days of nothing but rain we have fallen behind on our daily tasks. Priorities for today are course setup and areas that impact the golf game the most, greens, course setup and bunker. We will be mowing and rolling this morning, but greens speeds will be on the slow side because they are still saturated. We are scheduled to arrive back at Hartefeld around 3pm today to begin mowing some of the other areas of the golf course and will continue to do so tomorrow am. This should put us back on track.

Enjoy the great weather this weekend!

Rain Rain Rain....AGAIN!

We received another substantial amount of rain over the last couple days. It is really a double edge sword, I am glad we are not needing to irrigate, but the continued rain makes daily scheduling a challenge. Today, we will be cartpath only with blue flags. Forecast is for continued rain today and 60% chance tomorrow.

I wanted to take a moment to thank the Board of Advisors of Hartefeld National. We had another very good meeting last week. Myself and my team greatly appreciate all your support, we look forward to continued success.

We were finally able to begin spraying some of the native areas earlier this week, but the rain the past few days has again put that on hold. We will look to get out again possibly for a bit on Saturday morning, but most likely next week.

Despite all the rain, our disease incidence has been low. We changed our early spring program this year to concentrate on early season control of dollar spot. This new program has been extremely successful. We have had, knock-on-wood, zero incidence of dollar spot so far this year.