One week under our belt and nothing out of the ordinary. We were able to finish aerating and top dressing all greens this week (except 14, still no irrigation) so all I need now is some seasonal warm temperatures. The mornings are mostly frosty and only a very few daily highs have been above +12. Also, we've had no real moisture and as a result some of the greens have gone sort of funky (as I mentioned in my last post) and are slow to green up. Heat, not scorching heat, is the key for us now. Give me some +18 and above 0 for overnight lows and we should see some good growth.
The greens that appear to be in mid-season form were those that were covered with tarps for the winter or were the greens that saw some time under the tarps during the early spring. Not only do tarps act like a "blanket" for the turf and keep any heat from the sun trapped a bit longer they also keep the relatively humidity higher which, in this circumstance, aids in early season green up. You can dry turf out under tarps so you still have to keep a wary eye but in this part of the world early season tarping is almost always a real plus for helping the turf get a "leg up" early in the season. As always, there's a catch. Tarps really aren't overly expensive but they are labour intensive. Moving them around, peeling them off on hot days, putting them back on at night, and battling the wind are guarantees every year. The days of having even a small crew of staff working the weeks before we open are long gone. We are trying to come up with a method to make it a one man process but it's proving harder than we thought. As the saying goes, "necessity is mother of invention" so I guess we'll see either how needy or inventive we can be.
