Winter Damage

Greens have greened up some more but many high exposed areas continue to struggle to get going.  The winter seems to have really set the turf back and I am amazed at how slow it has been to respond.  I brought some plugs into my office to see how they would respond in a warm environment.  

  

 You can see not all plants lived but probably 40% did make it, but they are barely poking their heads out as you can see if you look closely at the picture above.  So half dead is not good but I prefer to look at the bright side and it's better than all dead.  That gives us something to work with and should be enough to keep putting quality decent.
Below is a plug from good quality turf.   You can see how much better it is than the plug above.  It has some plant loss, but its overall vigor is much better than you see above for whatever reason.  That is why you see the blotchiness of the greens right now.  Some patches are lagging behind in their development, but should start to catch up in the next couple weeks.

.
So what do we do from here?  We will aggressively fertilize to stimulate growth and recovery from the surviving plants and then overseed around April 15 to bolster the population.  We will explain that process and its difficulties at a later date. Also we will be mowing at a higher height of cut and less frequently than normal so greens will be a bit slower than normal.  As the turf starts to recover we will focus more on putting quality and less on just growing grass, but that will be the priority for now.

We continue to aerate fairways and are nearly half done with that project.  They are looking pretty good so far and will get mowed for the first time this week.  Greens surrounds and tees have been a bit slower to get going but also will receive their first mowing this week.  Both of these areas look pretty good coming out of winter.  There are a few thin spots on approaches from last fall's bentgrass killing applications as expected but we are really pleased with how they are going to be once they start growing.