December

It's coming up to almost one month since my last post and, as I indicated at the very beginning, that means there isn't a whole lot to talk about. Most of our time has been indoors tying up loose ends. I've slightly obsessed over updating and bettering our record keeping for fertilizer and chemical applications on the golf course. I've been trying to tie in our inventory to our application records in a "real time" sense. Previous years records help with purchasing in the new year but turf conditions, weather, maintenance practices, and gremlins can change the amounts of products used and the timing of applications. Sometimes we are unsure of where we stand with respect to the amount of particular product so, obviously, a more accurate method of tracking will keep us better informed of where we stand during the growing season.

#18 Green
Seeing an smelling "green" under snow cover
always makes my day.

Last week we checked conditions on green surfaces and found all but 5 were completely unfrozen and had no ice layers on the surface. Of the 5 frozen greens two were tarped (7 and 15) and the remaining three (12, 14, and 16) were untarped. What does all this mean? Its early to really comment but, generally, unfrozen surfaces suggests a year with high disease pressure. This may only be an issue on those fairways we did not spray and/or those fairways we experimented with "lite" spray rates. I'm fairly comfortable in saying that all the sprays applied to the green surfaces went well so disease on the green surface during the winter should not be too big of an issue. We have about a 11" (28cm) snow cover which should be able to absorb any small rain events. Moderate to heavy rain and mild temperatures will affect the integrity of the existing snow but any melting snow or rain making its way to the green surface should soak in since most of our greens are thawed. However, all bets are off if we have a catastrophic rain/melt event like we had in December 2007 (we had to sod a portion of 18 green in the spring of 2008 because of ice damage).