still preparing for season

This summer has been a very busy one for the maintenance staff. We still have several items yet to do over the course of the next month. Among them are:

• Adding sand to most greenside traps and several fairway traps.
• Pine-strawing beds on the course.
• Continued landscaping.
• Sod work.
• Weed control.
• Winter annual plantings.
• Palm tree trimming.

Below are other examples of landscaping that has been done on and around the course.

Bag-Drop circle done with peach hibicus and gold-mound.

#18 tee area.

Nasty hillside by fairway trap on #2.

fungus among us

Recently, I have been battling several issues on several of the greens here. Late summer always proves to be a challenge in maintaining healthy greens. About two weeks ago I began noticing issues with turf health on several of the greens. Many, many factors contribute to declining turf health.

Stress to the turf in several forms can start a cycle of problems. Weather is probably the most significant factor in all of this. The common belief is that the hot summer days of South Florida provide ideal conditions in which to grow bermudagrass. While high soil temperatures are absolutely necessary, afternoon thunderstorms, high humidity and periods of extended cloud cover are also factors that put stress on the plant. One of the things that we try to do is to reduce the stresses that can occur. We generally raise the height of cut and refrain from any aggressive verti-cutting. Unforeseen factors such as irrigation issues may arise and that is what happened on a couple of the greens. Through several fungicide applications, I am confident that I have stopped the culprit which is referred to as Bermudagrass Decline. The areas that have been affected have become thin and weak. Now we have to do several things to bring the turf back to full health. These include frequent fertilizations of nitrogen sources, topdressing and spiking. We are also mowing the affected greens by hand at higher cutting heights.  I have already seen improvements in these areas.

deep-tine greens aerification

Today we performed our last summer aerification on our greens. We contracted an aerification company to deep-tine the greens. Using half-inch solid tines, the machine drives deep into the soil (about 7 inches) and opens up the putting surface to allow better movement of air and water. As invasive as this seems, it was almost unnoticeable two days later.

course update

The maintenace staff continues to prep the golf course for the upcoming season. Today we planted 20 palm trees along the right side of #17 near the lake.

These are replacement palms that have been lost over the years. We also plan on doing some nice plantings beneath the groups in an effort to restore these areas to the way they were originally. We still have several others to replace on the course namely #6 before you get to the bridge. We have lost a couple in there but we cannot get to this area until the preserve behind the green dries up enough to get the loader to the location. We continue to do normal maintenance such as trimming and edging bunkers, weed eradication, trimming the ornamental grasses throughout the course, etc. Some things we have left to do that are more a matter of timing are adding fresh sand to the greenside bunkers and select others, pine-strawing all landscaped areas, planting of the winter annual flowers. We have a bit of sod work to complete where we have suffered damage from mole crickets and the armadillos that feed on them.