Wednesday, December 2, 2009

July 2008

From the Golf Course,

Thank you for your patience and cooperation the last couple of weeks with all of the heavy rains we received. We tried very hard to give you a golf course to play every day but on a few occasions precipitation just wouldn’t allow us to do so.

With the heavy rains and wet ground one of the biggest things that we’ve noticed are the amount of big divots being taken. Remember to replace your divots and use the sand mixture to topdress around them. Never leave a divot lay out on the turf always replace it! This is helps us maintain the turf and is a courtesy to your fellow golfers. We are going to see a lot of play the next couple of months and this is something that will have a profound impact on the quality of the turf throughout the year.

The red stakes are really abused. Many people are ignoring the entrance and exit points. At the greens when you see a red stake exit to the cart path and then stay on the golf cart path until the next tee and red stake. Getting off of the path around the greens damages the turf and causes unfair lies making it very difficult to hit a good shot.

As you play the next couple of weeks you will see ribbons tied to many of the trees. We are not cutting down or doing anything to these trees. The purpose of these ribbons is to identify the ash trees that we have on the golf course. We have 2 golf course sub committees that are discussing the location and importance of these trees and making sure we have a plan in place if the Emerald Ash Borer arrives in Iowa.

We have heard comments about the amount of "poa annua" that is now in the putting greens. Actually we have a very small population of poa in the putting surfaces. The little yellow spotting you see on the greens is called yellow tuft. This is a turf disease that causes the end of the turf plant to get yellow, puff up and grow abnormally. This disease is very prevalent in wet weather. The little spots do look like poa but they are in fact a disease that we continue to treat.

We are surprised at how fast the surface of the golf course has dried out this week. With all of the recent rains one would think we’d have plenty of water, and in fact we have very good sub soil moisture. But with the good sun, low humidity and very shallow roots caused by all of the rain, pay special attention to your home lawns. They are going to need more light frequent applications of water until deeper roots can be developed. It’s hard to believe that after 10" of rain last week, we are back to watering this week.

Respectfully,


Rick Tegtmeier, CGCS