Greg’s Greenkeeping Blog August 2019

One of the great things about Hunley is the extended season that we get due to the nature and setting of the course. August is another prime month for us, but as it spells the end of summer for many, as leaves begin to fall and damp dewy days becomes more prevalent. We though, are fortuante to still look forward to another couple of months without any real change, with firm and dry conditions continuing well into October.

There is always plenty to keep us on ours toes though and through August the team have continued to keep the course in fine shape, with some fantastic feedback from golfers.

Here’s the focal points from August:

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• Greens condition
• Turf disease
• Rough management

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Greens

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Although the greens play consistently well throughout the season for us, the extreme changes in weather conditions make it more challenging than ever to keep them like that.

However, now we have fine grass dominant greens, it’s certainly far more straight forward and certainly more sustainable for us as a result.

Our management involves the following, very straightforward maintenance to produce excellent surfaces.

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• Mowing 5 – 6 days per week depending on growth with height of cut set at 5 mm
• Rolling once a week, but only if we feel there is a need to increase pace and trueness
• Wetting agent application monthly ot help retain moisture within the soil profile and as consistently as possible.
• Watering when required to maintain soil moisture and prevent it from falling below 15%
• Fertilising is now just using Nitrogen and we have only made 2 applications this year, totalling 14.5 kg of Nitrogen per hecatre applied. For those that don’t understand what that means, it is a very low amount of feeding when you compare it to an average amount applied being maybe 100 kg per hectare.

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This management results very little growth and with the grasses we have also being fine leaved, means there is very little friction created as the ball rolls across the green.

It has taken a number of years to reach this point, but everyone can now see the benefits and we have had incredible feedback on the quality of the greens, especially hearing from long standing members that have never experienced them like this before.

That isn’t to say they haven’t been good in previous years, as they have, it just hasn’t been as straightforward for us to produce the results and espescially over a prolonged portion of the year.

Better still, there is no real need to undertake any aggresive maintenance to control thatch with renovations such as hollow coring, scarifying and heavy sanding. This is becuase the slow growing nature of the grass species, combined with low fertiliser applications means that the thatch doesn’t really accumulate and what does, is degarded naturally by soil microorganisms.

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Turf Disease

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The changing climate is leading to more in the way of turf diseases, particularly with the extremes in changes sometimes even from 1 day to the next.

Through August we have seen 2 different diseases, 1 of which we were anticipating and another we were not.

Anthracnose is a disease that is prevalent in late summer and attacks Annual meadow grass, particularly when it is under stress.

This we were anticpating and have used to our advantage. As we don’t want to have Annual Meadow grass in our greens and also only have a small amount of it within the sward, we have allowed the disease to kill the grass for us. This has been in a controlled fashion and we have then moved in to seed small affected areas with Fescue grasses to further increase it’s dominance in the turf grass sward.

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Take All Patch is another disease that we have seen and this isn’t uncommon at this time of year. We have a couple of greens that generally get a few patches every year without ever really increasing or spreading.

During August though, Take All Patch has actually affected around 6 -7 greens and a couple of which has seen it quite widespread across the green.

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Fortunately this disease doesn’t affect fescue, however it does attack Bent grass which makes up a significant portion on some of our greens. To give some perspective, we have around 50% Fescue grasses, 30% Bent grasses and 20% Meadow grasses.

The worst disease for us is Dollar Spot as it affects mainly Fescue, but we haven’t had any sign of this disease since the end of June and with cooler temparatures now likely to be the norm, we should have got through another year managing it without any trouble.

The fescue and bent grass are much less susceptible to disease than Annual Meadow Grass and although they are still affected, any damage is much less severe.

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Rough Management

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August also brings us to the time of year for the huge task of cutting and collecting the long grass between holes.

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Although the rough creates the definition and is such a significant feature of our spectacular course, it requires annual cutting and removal of the arisings to keep thinning down it’s nature. This will see finer grasses encouraged as well as an increase in wildflowers.

During August most of the fringing rough has been cut back. This is the long grass that immeadiately borders the fairways and semi rough that we keep closely mown. Beyond that is the longer, less frequently management rough that gets cut and collected annually.

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September will be a busy time for us as we slowly make are way around the course with the flail mowers.

We will also be releasing the Winter Program towards the end of September, so look out for that with more exciting improvements being planned for the off season!

Happy golfing,

Greg

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