Cold, Hard Winter Effects

It is now the middle of June and the effects of the cold, hard winter are really starting to show what the effects Mother Nature can have on our plant community. Across the entire central Iowa area it is amazing to see how many dead trees and landscape plants there are. A lot of this was a 2 stage setup. We went into the winter in a drought situation, many landscape areas are very confined on how they get their water. If you didn't water this gardens or areas many of them really just freeze dried over the winter.

Here at DMGCC we had 2 such areas. The boulevard below the pro shop and the walkway to the tennis building. Both of these areas are very restricted for good root growth because of the concrete around them. It really never occcured to me that we should be giving these plants extra water last fall. Then we went into a deep freeze that we have not seen for several years. The effects of the cold really took their toll on these landscape areas.

On the golf course we had many trees that have died or are not doing well. We have given them ample enough time to leaf out and many of them will not do so. So over the next couple of weeks you will be seeing us removing all of these dead or dying trees. Please be patient with us, we have many items on our plate right now but we will be getting to them as soon as we can.

You will also notice that the nature grass planting areas that we have around the golf course are suffering. Many of these landscape grasses are warm season grasses with very extensive root systems. Even though they have a vast expanse of roots, with the deep freeze that we had in the soil, many of the these grasses did not survive. If there is 1 little sprig of grass coming up it will regenerate over the next year or two. We are not ignoring these areas but giving them a chance to survive also.

This is one example of a area where some of them are doing ok and some are showing some sign of recovery.