What a difference a month makes!

 

This is 7 green on April 29 and May 29.  Sorry for the blurry pic but you can see the dramatic difference.  While there are still some blemishes the green looks much better!  At times during the recovery it seems like no progress is being made until you look back a week or even a month.  This shows how particularly bad our situation was.  When there is more dead than alive you have some serious issues!  

It has been a trying time from the disappointment of losing the greens to the struggle with weather difficulties during May but we think we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I appreciate the support and encouragement many of you have given and want to recognize all my crew for their hard work.  I want to give extra kudos to Taylor Walker who nearly single handedly sodded and patched most of our dead spots!  That is over 1000 sq. feet of sod and 4000 plugs!!!

 The greens have not made it all the way back to full recovery but each day we are seeing improvement and think within a couple of weeks we will be 95% healed (about 75% now).  The greens are still a bit shaggy and inconsistent but we are starting to manage them in a more normal manner now and the putting quality should improve in the next couple of weeks.

As for the rest of the course it is looking great.  I said we have 69 acres of great turf and 1 acre bad but it was the bad that was in the most important spots!  Just like you- we cant wait to get to that 70 acres of good!

Greens Progress Report

The greens continue to get better as they recover from winterkill.  We have seeded most areas a couple times to try to reestablish a strong population of plants.  In the worst areas we have sodded and patched with sod from our turf nursery.  We will continue to do that until all areas are healed.  But for the most part we just need time for the turf to grow back together.

 Progress has not been as quick as I or you have hoped but we are gaining.  Obviously the weather has been a factor in the slow recovery for a few reasons.  First we have had a couple of very intense rains this May that have washed away some seed and carried the topdressing away that protects the seedlings from drought and traffic.  Secondly, a late frost on May 12 hit our second round of seedlings pretty hard and injured or killed many of those.  Finally, as discussed in a prior post recovery from winterkill is most difficult just because of the cool soil temperatures and lack of consistent temperatures to promote growth.  That definitely has been the case this spring.

Most people wonder "When will the greens be back to normal?"  Next week they will be better and in two weeks better yet as incremental progress is made.  Within a couple of weeks many of the small blemishes will be grown together and greens will be decent.  As we move into June we will start to manage greens more like we normally do and by mid-late June they should be back to what you expect at Wild Horse.
We are working as hard as we can to get back to good conditions and appreciate your patience and also the encouragement many of you have given to me and my staff.

Greens Recovery

We finally started seeing some seedlings emerge last week from our seeding on April 14. (Notice the light green rows in the picture above).  It took about 6 or 7 days longer than normal due to the cold temperatures but we are glad to see some new grass.  Seeding in marginal soil temperatures usually leads to inconsistent stands which is what we are seeing.  In some places we have solid rows of grass in our verticut slits but other rows only show sporadic plants and then some rows have no plants.  We are not surprised by this because the longer the seed lays in the cold ground the less germination you tend to get.  But we did get some plants started early in the seeding window especially under the covers.  Then we went back into the spots that had washed the worst from the hard rain or had poor germination and seeded again on April 28.  We also seeded a few spots again today after deciding our stand was marginal.  We think these latest seedings will perform better now that soil temperatures are favorable.  So we have been doing everything possible to create a good seed bank for new plants to emerge and fill our voids.  Again once the seed comes up there are other perils that can harm new seedlings.  We have already seen a couple cold nights ding the leaf tips of some seedlings and a couple of areas look to have some disease affecting them.  So it is a long road to recovery but we are off and walking!

Phase two of the recovery process is patching isolated dead spots with sod from our nursery.  We have started this time-consuming process by concentrating our efforts in the cuppable areas.  Then we will go back around again and start patching seeded areas that didn't germinate well and just keep making the rounds until we have a complete green.  This phase will probably last all May as we tackle this tedious process as time allows.  We have a decent amount of sod available in our nursery so we will use as much as we can to create a playable surface the quickest.

Speaking of playability, as mentioned in the last post the putting quality is at its poorest right now but as the seedlings start to mature and the remaining plants creep into the voids, the surface will become more consistent in a couple of weeks and will continue to get better toward the end of the month.  By then the greens should be pretty decent with only isolated humps with thin grass.  I expect that by the middle to end of June all winter damaged greens will be completely healed.
 

Greens Seeding

We completed the greens seeding process last Tuesday and Wednesday.  We modified our verticut reels to cut a wider slit and then dropped the seed, verticut again, seeded again, and then dragged the seed in.  Then we finished by topdressing and dragging once more.  The goal is to create a seedbed that can germinate as many plants as possible to minimize recovery time.  Unfortunately the heavy rain we had the past few days may have moved some seed and it may be necessary to reseed some spots at a later date.  As I talked about last year when some of my colleagues suffered winterkill on their greens, recovery from winterkill on greens is the most challenging task in turf management.  First the bentgrass seed is about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.  So it can easily wash, dry out, smother, or blow away.  So just getting the seed to germinate is difficult.  Once that happens, the seedling is not very vigorous due to its small seed size -bigger seed means more energy stored in the seed to help it get going.  Then there is the problem of traffic from mowers and golfers so even once the seedling gets started it can be ripped out or damaged from traffic.  To mitigate some of these issues our greens management will be much different than usual.  First, we will water regularly during the day to keep the seed moist-it can only take a few minutes of drought at the crucial root extension stage to lose our little guys.  Secondly, we will minimize mowing as much as possible during the next 3-4 weeks while still attempting to keep a putting surface.  Finally all this must be done with temperatures that are marginal for seedling germination so maturation of the seedling takes much longer than you or I woulld like.  If the damage we incurred from the winter happened in July the recovery time would be about a third as long so patience is key.

 

It is readily apparent now what is alive and what is not compared to a couple of weeks ago.  The putting quality up to now has been OK but the greens in the next few of weeks will be more inconsistent as the dead grass recedes and the alive grass grows.  As the remaining live plants start to fill in and seedlings germinate and mature the surface will become more consistent but that may not happen until mid to late May with good weather.  We apologize for the inconvenience but are doing all we can to remedy the situation. 

Spring???

This video is outside the shop this AM.  Not too exciting but wanted to make sure I could get a video uploaded from my phone to this platform.  As most of you know this blog was contained within the Wild Horse Golf Course website under Superintendent News and will continue that way for awhile during the transition to this platform.  Once the transition is complete the tab will take you directly here to view the blog.  We think this version will be easier for us to post pictures and video which should provide you with more information.  Also more content will be stored and indexed to allow you to look back at previous posts.  Hope you enjoy the changes and continue to follow the maintenance team at Wild Horse. 

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.

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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.    

Prescribed Burn

Prescribed Burn planned for Monday April 13