Agronomy Department and Course Weekly Update

January 13, 2016

Winter has finally arrived! It is great to see the Bermuda grass going fully dormant; it felt like we had over-seeded fairways for a few weeks. Now that the grass has finally gone dormant, we will begin our wall to wall Pre/Post Emergent Herbicide application. This application is critical in preventing spring/early summer weeds from emerging and it will also clean up all the nuisance weeds that are growing on the course right now. The El Nino has provided prime growing conditions for the winter annual weeds.  

The maintenance team has been out this week edging bunkers and trimming native grasses. These are jobs that we typically attack while the course is frozen or frosted. We still have another week or two until all the grasses are trimmed and then we will begin cleaning up all the leaves that fell during autumn.

I have been traveling a little bit over the past two weeks; I went to Daytona for a ValleyCrest Agronomic planning session and spent the last few days at Reynolds Plantation for the Georgia GCSA BOD retreat. I learned a lot during both trips and I can’t wait to implement some of the Agronomic and Leadership strategies that were presented and discussed. It is always nice to get out of your comfort zone and be challenged. 

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