Japanese Beetles, Wow is about all I can say. Everywhere you look across the city you can see the damage this little beast is doing. Here at the club we did a preventative insecticide spray to help us combat them. It is working very well, if you look at our 65+ Linden trees you will see a little damage at the top of them, but remember the insect must ingest some leaf material with the insecticide in it to kill them. More importantly look at the bases of the trees and you will see big numbers of dead Japanese Beetles. So our efforts are working.
Range tees – they too are seeing the effects of a long hot summer with no rain. Members are using them and really taking a lot of divots. Please remember to practice like our video showed, try to place the ball in the back of your last divot. Doing this will harvest less turf and it will help recovery time.
In this record setting heat that we are receiving also comes some concerns with our department. We always try to maintain a very fast and firm golf course. However with all of the heat this calls for something different. Less is more for us during this time of stress. We don’t try to manage on the edge, we try to manage to save the turf and keep it alive during this period. We don’t double cut, topdress or roll greens nearly as much just trying to keep man made stresses to a minimum. We do a lot of syringing and watering if necessary to help cool the turf. When temperatures are conducive to do this type of maintenance we will start up again.
Please remember to fix ball marks and divots. I think if you look at every golf course superintendent’s blog page across the country you will see that statement. We all battle the lazy golfer who doesn’t think it’s his or hers’ responsibility to do course etiquette. It is all of our jobs to help maintain a good playing surface and as a golfer you have to fix ballmarks and divots.