Agronomy Department and Course Weekly Update

December 29, 2015

So far, December 2015 is the warmest on record (57.3F)… just nosing out 1889 (57.2F) (Justin Farmer, WSB, Twitter). It also included 7.5” inches of rain with 1-2” inches expected on Wednesday the 30^th. These heavy rains coupled with the record breaking heat, has our MiniVerde greens breaking dormancy (UNREAL!). Typically, we only mow once or twice per month in December and we are currently attempting (rain depending) to mow daily. The rains have saturated the soils/turf surrounding the greens and this past weekend in attempting to mow and roll the greens for increased playablity, some equipment got stuck in the wet turf. A majority of what you saw was cosmetic and with some light tamping and rains, the visible ruts have disappeared. We learned a lesson this weekend, sometimes it just too wet to get equipment on the greens!

As the turf begins to dry over the upcoming week, you will see the Maintenance Team out attacking the weeds that have exploded on property. The warm and wet weather has been an ideal growing environment for the annual winter weeds. Our plan is to begin hand spraying until the turf dries enough to have our big spray rigs out. At that point we will apply our “wall to wall” Pre/Post emergent herbicide application.     

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at kmacdonald@valleycrest.com and for more information follow us on Twitter @stivescc_vcsup and the Blog: http://vcgmstivescountryclub.blogspot.com/

See you on the course,

Kyle Macdonald, GCS, Class A

These are the clippings from #1 green this morning. This is from a single cut at .160