Sharing the Shade on Warm Season Turf

Pull up a chair, grab a coffee and enjoy the latest instalment of the maintenance Blog.
During the week I sacrificed the mid morning coffee on one of the warmer days to share some chlorophyll with the locals 
now that is sorted ....

We have finally started seeing an increase in growth rates from our warm seasons turf areas, (Tees, Fairways and 1st cut Rough) after what has been a very mild spring and particularly cooler November with below average temperatures and overcast conditions.

Our warm season turf requires at least 8 hours of direct sunlight and temperatures of 25 degree plus for healthy growth.
Temperature and Light intensity play a critical role in photosynthesis in order to produce enough energy to grow and recover from normal wear.  The turf hasn't had the climatic conditions to provide the energy to do so.

In the field, the mild conditions have held back recovery growth from winter wear from player traffic on our tees,  and with heavily tree lined fairways also impacted our first cut rough specially in areas of less desirable growing conditions in shade or outside that of our uniform irrigation coverage, this affects the fairway delineation, making it less visible to see.
Good news is, with temperatures and light intensity increasing our warm season turf is now responding to our inputs with wear and divot recovery, and fairway definitions improving dramatically over the past 2 weeks and will continue to do so over the summer period.
The warmer temperatures have also triggered the start of Tee Renovations which will commence Monday 5th December through Wednesday 7th, initially planned for the beginning of November but for the reason above I chose to postpone the works in order for favourable weather conditions to provide for faster turf recovery. 
All tees will be scroll cut, (some scalping may be evident), selected tees either dethached or verti cut(less aggressive than dethatching), all tees cored and sanded. 
We expect a 4 week recovery period back in good condition for the Capel Jnr and Snr Open in January.
Tees maybe a little sandy, in the meantime, tee up is recommended and will assist in faster recovery by limiting new divots from hitting off the deck.
In other news the 5th tee was laid last week, and has taken well, receiving its first cut Friday.
The RHS of 1 green is also complete being seeded last Thursday. The area will be a mix of wintergreen couch fescues and kentucky Bluegrass.

We also took some time out to patch a few surround areas.
With warm season turf now increasing growth rates, it does mean we will need to increase our Clip frequency, doubling, even trippling the amount of time required to mow fairways, tees surrounds and all broad area turf. Less time will be spent on project type work as demands of irrigation maintenance and grooming increase.
Higher input demands for nutritional programs,  pest and diseases, moisture management and maintenance for the extra workloads on equipment will also start accounting for more of our time over summer.

With that said we still have plans for a few minor projects through summer, to keep things interesting, so stay tuned.

Finally, a shout out to say a huge thankyou to Ross O'Dowd for the tremendous amount of time and energy spent on the new ladies tee signs. 
With magnificent support from Mark Dawson and Mike Anderson the end result is a fantastic addition to the course. 
Thankyou for all your time and effort in undertaking the tee sign project.

Until next time 
Happy Hooking !

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