August & Member-Member Preparations... Timing is everything!

This week we began preparations for next week's Member-Member event.  Our first step was to vertical cut and topdress the putting greens.  While this is done periodically throughout the season, as they say, timing is everything.  Completing this process 10 days before an event provides for the improvement in smoothness and firmness while allowing enough time to work the topdressing sand into the soil profile.  (On a side note, my favorite day to roll a putt is the day after a topdressing, the surface might be a little sandy, but super smooth!)

The staff is also working on applying various fertilizers, soil surfactants, and plant growth regulators to the playing surfaces this week.  These applications give a boost to the aesthetics and playability come tournament time, but also help battle the summer stresses that August can bring to the turfgrass.  

Soil surfactants or wetting agents have always been an important part of our program in terms of playability and water conservation.  However, this season we have leaned on these products even more in an effort to conserve labor, especially in this hot and dry part of the summer.  The idea is basically to be as efficient as possible with the overnight irrigation in order to reduce or eliminate the need for staff to water by hand during the workday.    

We will end this week of preparation by applying plant protectant products to the putting greens tomorrow.  This application will help the putting greens tolerate the high temperatures forecasted for next week in addition to fighting off a little "cosmetic funk" that showed up today on a handful of greens. 

"Cosmetic Funk" aka Yellow Patch (aka Cool-season Brown Patch) on #12 green 8/13/20

This Yellow Patch is caused by the pathogen Rhizoctonia cerealis.  Rhizoctonia species naturally occur in most soils which is why Brown Patch (Rhizoctonia solani) is one of the most widely occurring turfgrass diseases.  While Brown Patch can be a constant threat to a golf course, we are fortunate that our relatively cool temperatures are only conducive to its less aggressive cousin.  Typically, Yellow Patch does not effect the ball roll, and the turfgrass is able to "grow out" of the condition when environmental stresses subside.  However, we were already planning to apply plant protectant products tomorrow to help with heat stress and begin our snow mold preventative rotation (yes it is 85 degrees and I am thinking about snow mold, more details on this will be included in a future post).  Though it may be warm now, winter is coming and these chemistries are in our program specifically because of their versatility in combating the disease stresses common to our environment.  So once again, timing is everything. In this case a well timed plant protectant application is able to combat three different stresses with two chemistries... not quite two birds with one stone, but we will take it!