What a farce. The past month monkeying with the river has been a complete disaster. I was concerned with government delays but instead it has been everything else that has dragged out the process. Contractors, pumper trucks, and deliveries all seemed to conspire against us but really it was just a series of poorly timed events that includes the continuation of summer that have delayed the projects completion.
Everyday I go and see more areas succumbing to heat stress brought on by the lack of water and it is finally worrying me. As the season progresses to mid-fall and the days get shorter and colder the opportunity turf will have to green up and store carbs before the ground freezes are all but disappearing. I am concerned with the wear on areas from traffic that are no longer growing. There is no way they had sufficient time to prepare for a hard winter and I don't see how those areas will recover next year to the same condition they were in early on.
When we spray fungicide it has a systemic component that has to taken up by a living grass plant in order to work at its best. That will not happen on any area that has already gone brown and dormant. I guess if you had to put a positive spin on it you could say that disease also needs a live plant to wreak its havoc so why worry? You worry because if we have a hard winter (cold, no cover) the turf will get hammered from low temperature kill because it did not have time in the fall to prepare for winter. You worry because if we get big snow over unfrozen ground turf will get hammered during spring melt when disease is active and because the fungicide that was applied in the fall was not taken up. You worry because if we get any sort of thaw or rain event that forms ice the turf will not have the reserves to cope and it will get hammered that way.
Granted most the areas are fairways, rough, and some tees but so much can happen over winter that it really pisses me off to know we are already behind the 8 ball for next spring and winter hasn't even started! Hopefully, this is one of those things I've overestimated.
