As fall weather goes this year has been in the top 5. Since the last day of play there has been half dozen or so frost days and only a few rainy days with most of those occurring within the last week. Since its only been me for the last 2 weeks the nice weather has made it easy to get things buttoned up with the only thing left to do is lay out the tarps. With respect to the tarps I had to replace #7 old tarp since it was badly torn and had numerous holes. Unfortunately, that means there was no money to buy more Enkamat (go
HERE for reminder) which is disappointing since I've been pleased with the outcome where I've used Enkamat under the tarps. I may divide up whatever Enkamat we have to half-ass cover areas on the greens under the tarps; especially under impermeable tarps.
The mild fall has meant a bit more disease popping up on fairways, even on those fairways I treated.
 |
| Microdochium Patch, 14 Fwy |
I would guess that the disease began developing before I sprayed but I am comfortable that most fairways were treated before the disease really took hold as it obviously has in the preceding picture. Untreated fairways are definitely showing disease but they always do. Timing the sprays is tricky and I've talked about it before (go
HERE) but time constraints, staffing, costs of the chemical, and the mode of action of the treatment all mean I have to make an somewhat educated guess when the spray has to go down. As it stands now this season is shaping up as a high disease pressure year; especially if we get a permanent snow cover before the ground has time to freeze (and personally when it comes to that I like unfrozen ground since water from any winter rain will soak in versus freeze into a ice sheet).
For the fall sprays I did my usual random experiments comparing different chemicals and different rates on certain fairways.
 |
| 18 Fwy: Instrata vs Trilogy |
 |
| 8 Fwy: Different Application Rates |
By not spraying the entire fairway on certain holes I can compare chemical efficacy in relation to disease occurrence on non-treated areas. This year I also picked spots on some fairways (1,10,12,13) where I did not spray to monitor efficacy and to get people appreciating or understanding the necessity of winter treatments. To make it fun I choose a few of the fairways and deliberately left a particular geometrical shape so as to catch your eyes and deflect criticisms from other "turfies" who may think I just zoned out and made a mistake. Just one more reason to anticipate next golf season!
Again with respect to the weather most areas had time to do some catch up on root mass since I wasn't mowing and your weren't playing (Go
HERE for deep tine and root review)
 |
| Token End of Season Root Pict to Make me Sleep Better |
Other greens are always the same this time of year and always amaze the hell out of me each spring and fall or whenever they make it through the stress with surviving grass.
 |
| #2 Green after Deep Tine, Antithesis of Previous Photo |
I am pretty sure I can grow roots as this picture shows:
 |
| 10 inches of Poa Roots |
This is a plug I took from the collar around a green where we bury hollow sleeves used to hold up the fence posts around select greens. This picture shows what aeration can do if you commit. I could talk tonnes about the potential this picture shows but the panicky looks I get when I say we will be pulling a half inch core three to four inches deep tells me support would be hard to come by (believe or not but there are machines which can remove a "core" that big and deep and then refill with sand all at the same time!).
I suspect my next post will involve numbers or something like that since we are entering the fantasy/planning stages of next years budget.
