Archive for April, 2010

April continues to be cool and dry, with several substantial frost days last week and a total of less than 1″ of rainfall month to date.  This means the areas where we had winter damage are still moving very slowly to fill in.  We are feeding the greens again today in hopes of some warmer night time temperatures to really get the grass plants growing.   Damaged spots have been seeded several times and we will continue to introduce new seed to these areas until they are filled in.  #7 continues to improve with the cover on it and I hope to get that green open for play as soon as possible.

We continue to get very seasonable weather having frost each of the past three mornings.  The seventh green continues to improve, with some of the grass recovering and some new seed germinating.  It is still difficult to predict the exact opening date for that green, but it won’t be open for this weekend.  The factors that we can control such as, supplemental irrigation, fertilization, plant protectants, mowing height and frequency, will only help to supplement the factors that we can’t control, rain, sunshine, warmth, and duration of sunlight.  As the factors that are out of our control impove we should see a much quicker recovery response.

Ball Roll on Greens:  It is still early spring in the Berkshires and we have had 3 consecutive days of frost and the forecast is for cold temperatures with possible snow showers over the weekend.  With this usual type of weather there is a large variance in the growth of different grass species.  Some grass plants still haven’t fully come out of winter dormancy while others have been growing  for weeks.  Another contributing factor is the use of green covers on some greens which has given some greens a chance to warm up and start growing a little bit faster than the others.  The variability in growth will cause greens to be bumpy as the ball hits patches of grass that are actively growing, and there also will likely be some inconsistency from green to green.  The main focus of the grounds staff is on continuing to improve green health this spring and continue to fill in damaged areas until we have 100% turf cover.  We expect this to happen no later than Memorial Day weekend and hopefully much sooner.  Until we have 100% turf cover and consistently warmer day and night time temperatures, ball roll on greens will be inconsistent.

The golf course will open for the season on Thursday April 15, 2010.  We will have one temporary green (#7) to start the season off with.  We did have a few spots of damage on a couple of other greens with #14 and #8 having the a couple of spots each of damage.  Greens #2, 11 and 15 have some spots that haven’t really taken off yet, but look like they will completely recover with a few more weeks of warm weather.  #7 will remain closed and covered when needed until I feel it is ready to handle traffic from golfers.  On #8 and #14 greens I will be using a couple of small peices of green cover on the bad spots to help keep the soil warm and minimize golfer traffic on these spots.  All of the damaged areas continue to improve slowly and look much better now than they did 3 weeks ago.