Beautiful weather in front of an Artic blast

 

The frost was back early this week as the low temperatures dipped below 40 again. Although it has been breezy, the temperatures have been very pleasant in the afternoons with plenty of sunshine. The courses have dried back out and should present well for this weekends Men's Member Member event. A cold blast of air is on the way for Monday where we will see sub 30 temps which will be plenty to finish turning the bermuda rough off color.

Our winter weed control application finished up this week across all 175 acres of bermudagrass on property. This application should both prevent and take care of any Poa annua that has popped up as we discussed last week. With such a large area, this is close to a $20,000 material cost application!

Some of this Celebration rough is so dense on the South that the Poa pressure should be much lower. Next year we are very much looking forward to thinning some of this rough out, getting it mowed a little lower to see if it can become a slightly more playable. The rough is out there to provide a half shot penalty, not a lost ball and multiple strokes.

The leaf battle continues, especially in the bunkers but on these drier afternoons we have been trying to clean up the lower edges of the bunkers where any sand has been blown out into the turf. Keeping these edges established is important for the life of the bunker and the overall presentation of the course.

You can see some darker areas sporadically in the zoysia fairways on the south. After a rain it is easy to mistake them for wet areas but they are actually zoysia seedheads.

The seedheads are actually purple and they are sterile so they will not germinate. It is more common to see seedheads in the spring but we are in small stretch of weather and daylight period that is similar to spring. This combined with some drought stress and nutrient deficiency gives us some random seedheads. We will see how bad the seeds look in the springtime and then next fall we may give some seedhead control growth regulators a try. 

Over on the North in between blowing and collecting leaves the guys finished off their drain on 11 from  last week with stone curbing and tall fescue sod. Tom, Bob and Nick with close to 90 years of experience here at Carmel did a great job on the stones.


For fun we did send in a sample of the water from McAlpine creek last week. This water is super clean  nutrient wise (low Nitrates and Phosphates). There are bicarbonates present in this water too but not at the levels we have in the lake thanks to the wells. Either way, treating our water properly next year will go a long way in producing a healthy golf course.


The rollers are out for this weekends event so there is no doubt the winners will need a hot putter! Enjoy the weather before the air from Canada drops in!

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