Wednesday, August 5, 2009

#3 Blue/white tee

The 3rd main tee has not looked well since early in July. It is a cool season tee made up of bentgrass, poa, rye, and blue grass. During the heat spell in June, we increased water on a majority of the course. This tee became dry during that period and then we over compensated our watering program and the tee then became too wet. We were also using a growth regulator on our cool season tee boxes since May to reduce the competitive advantage of the poa on the cool season tees and control the overall growth rates. This included tees on holes 2, 5, 10, and 11. Overall the regulator program was working pretty well but with the combination of the wet condition, diseased turf and the restriction of the poa plants, we began to lose turf.

We've got our watering problem managed, our preventative spray program is where it needs to be and we've taken the growth regulator out of the rotation at this time. Last week we slit seeded two directions with rye grass in the weakened turf areas. We have also been rotating tee locations at times to the alternate tee to reduce playing traffic. We also sprayed some micro-nutrient package on the tee to improve its overall health. Some heat is coming on in the next few days but I expect the tee to continue to improve and be in good shape in the next couple of weeks.
A majority of the weakness in the tee is on the left 1/2 of the tee and the front and back sections of the tee. The right side of the tee is for the most part in normal condition. The view below is from the front of the tee to the back of the tee.

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