Finally a little rain and some humidity! North is healing, South set for next week

 

Our whining and complaining about the weather last week triggered some rain to fall out of the sky about 30 minutes after last week's blog was posted. We could not be more thankful for the inch of rain that fell Thursday afternoon through Tuesday last week. We even had two cloudy days and the humidity has returned to the delight of all warm season turf.

The rain was perfectly timed as we started to heal in from the aeration and verticutting processes on the North. The fairways are filling in and very playable for a week out from removing a massive amount of thatch.

The bermuda greens have also started healing in nicely with the rain. These Dryject holes will stick around a little while longer but our solid tine holes have already filled over. We are back to mowing and rolling these surfaces and will drop the height again tomorrow to try and maintain speeds through the weekend.

The zoysia tees, fairways and approaches are playing beautifully this week after the rain and receiving their wetting agent and fertility package on Monday. Next week the South will be closed Monday through Thursday for its cultural practice week. The fairways here will be solid tine aerated and then verticut with the same tractor mounted machines we used on the North. This will again generate a massive amount of material that will be cleaned up and hauled away. All the zoysia will be topdressed next week as well in order to produce some firm surfaces for the rest of the season.

The South greens will enjoy a few days off from getting trampled from golf play next week. We will continue mowing as usual but our next small tine aeration (and final for the year) will occur August 24th and 25th. For now the roots are hanging on!

Our pumphouse also enjoyed a bit of relief last weekend with the rain. We took the opportunity to have our contractors come in and help clean the filters out for the second time this year. You can see this filter has plenty of lake debris on it so it is hard to imagine over 1500 gallons per minute of water flowing through here without putting a fair amount of stress on the system. Both filters are clean now and ready to finish the growing season out strong. Enjoy this next blast of heat as we count down the days to the end of July!

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