Greens and greens surrounds-what's going on?

Sorry for the lack of reports lately but here's an update on what's been going on.  Once again this fall we overseeded with bluegrass on the greens surrounds and then sprayed them with Tenacity.   The whitening of the turf is very apparent but if you noticed there was less "white" because we had removed most of the unwanted bentgrass last year.   The ryegrass will flash white but usually recovers as you are seeing right now.  Within a couple of years we have gone from 75% bentgrass to almost none.  The bluegrass /ryegrass mix is about 50/50 which is about as good as we could hope for.  So we are extremely pleased with that transition to the grass types we want and expect exceptional turf quality around the greens in the years to come.

Just around the corner (Oct. 5-7) we will be aerating greens with a 3/8 inch tine.  We will be pulling a core with this tine which doesn't mean much to you as the hole will still be the same size--not a large hole but it will affect putting quality some.   But we feel we need to get more aggressive with our greens aeration practices to reduce compaction and improve our root structure.  We will drag the cores to break them up and then topdress heavily on the 7th to fill in the holes.   We will be raising height of cut and reduce mowing frequency to help speed recovery before winter sets in.  But we will still roll the greens regularly to maintain speed and smoothness.  We have not pulled a core on greens  in several years so this is a major change in our greens management.  We expect to do the same process again in the spring and are anxious to see how much this helps our turf.  We expect better rooting, a slightly firmer surface, and better water infiltration which should lead to healthier more manageable greens.  The putting quality once healed should be as good as ever.

We have lots of chemical and fertilizer applications to ready the course for the winter and bunkers to work on this fall to keep us busy as mowing slows down.  In the next blog I will share some things we do to "put the course to bed."

Get out and get that last golf round in before the snow flies!