This week at Sunset: 8-14-2017

First, I’d like to wish all the parents a happy parents day as the first day of school in Colquitt County was today! My wife, Shannon, began her first day of teaching at Cox Elementary and so I'd like to wish all the teachers, parents, and kids a successful school year!

The rain has continued to be off and on. We received about .75” last night and another .30” today is expected. Looks like the trend will continue most of this week with it tapering off in time for the weekend. We’ve welcomed the rain when it comes to healing our greens from the aerification and that’s been the biggest benefit. On the flip side, the rain has caused our rough to really grow at a rapid pace. All in all, the late afternoon and overnight showers that we have been receiving has kept the moisture where we want it on the greens and fairways. This summer has been a wet one and it’s looking like that will continue as we get closer to the fall season.

Now that we are halfway through August, I thought I’d share with you some of our plans for the next few months. It may not seem like it now, but Fall and cooler temperatures are in the not too distant future. I have been gearing up for the past few weeks with different chemical sales reps for our upcoming overseed application and fall and winter season. The first objective will be to spray our preemergent for fall and winter weeds (mainly for poa annua). I will be applying two applications of preemergent herbicides to all of our tees, fairways, and green surrounds. This process will be done on August 21^st(next Monday) as it falls in the 6-8 week window before overseeding. We will overseed the fairways, tees, and green surrounds the week of October 2^nd. We will not be overseeding the greens. The greens will be on a nutrient program that will keep a lot of the color in the TifEagle. This kind of grass was never intended to be overseeded when it was first released by Dr. Wayne Hanna. So, we will raise the heights on the greens, pump some nutrients to it, and keep the weeds off of it as we move towards 2018. The 2^nd herbicide application will be December 4^th. These 2 applications will keep our golf course covered for winter weeds and for poa annua, especially.

The plan with our greens will be to, as I mentioned, keep as much color in the plant as possible. The majority of golf courses who have overseeded greens in the past have moved to painting greens and applying pigments to their greens. This certainly saves cost in the long run when you include the upkeep of maintaining a cool-season grass. My plan will be to not completely paint our greens, but with a combination of nutrients and pigments to hold the color as long as possible. Lately, the winter season has been very mild and so greens in this region haven't really gone completely dormant. The benefit of having TifEagle is that it can handle cooler temperatures. Last year, for instance, we didn't have one freeze on our greens until the last week of winter when the low got down to 28 degrees. So, our plan moving forward is to really get our greens nice and "juiced" heading into the fall and so that it can have lots of energy and carbohydrates to store so that during the cooler months it will have energy and carbs to burn off of. The advantages for us will be more control on the greens for any winter weeds like poa annua and we won't be mowing as often as we do compared to when we had overseeded greens. We will mow 2-3 days a week and roll the greens on days we don't mow. The green speeds will increase a lot and so we will raise the height on the greens to .175(Currently, they are .145) to slow the ball roll down. Also, raising the height of cut gives the grass more protection during the cooler months. I think the real benefit that we will see with the greens will be later in March and April when the greens start to transition. When the bermuda grass won't have to compete against the overseed will only speed up that transition and the result will be an even more healthy TifEagle green. For more information on turf colorants and paint, I've included a video from the USGA. It is a 10 minute webcast and provides a lot of information on this practice.
  

As a reminder, please remember to keep golf carts behind the white lines that you see throughout the golf course. We do not need any traffic inside those white lines or around the greens. With the Bermuda grass in its most vulnerable stage with the transition in full swing it is important to keep traffic away from highly sensitive areas- greens complexes, tops of teeboxes, and other weak areas throughout the course. Help us out by keeping your golf cart behind the white lines and off the green complexes and near the tops of tees. Those of you who use pullcarts are fine to cross the line as pullcarts are lighter and less aggressive. However, make sure not to pull your carts across the green. Again, I want to thank everyone for helping us keep your golf course healthy and in shape.

Thank you for following us this week as we strive to get better every day. As always, please feel free to reach out with any questions/comments that you may have by using this blog, Facebook page, or emailing me at davisjoey@hotmail.com. Thanks for reading!

See you on the course!

Joey Davis