We are at the hands of mother nature. Over the past two weeks temperatures have soared into the high 90’s and even over 100 degrees and our major goal was, and is, keeping the bentgrass plants cool. Frequently throughout the day our greens checkers spray a fine mist across the turf canopy to cool the plant just as humans will sweat to cool their bodies. Our efforts have been successful and we are beginning to see the benefits of our staff’s hard work. Even through the high temperatures, the greens have started the recovery process by producing new plants and leaf blades. As mother nature lends a helping hand with days in the 80’s and nights in the 60’s we will begin to see the greens recovery increase more than what we have seen over the past couple weeks. Cooler temperatures are going to allow us to apply a helping hand with the recovery by using fertilizers to increase growth. If weather patterns hold as they are prediciting for the week we will begin the fertilizer applications this week.
Through this unfortnate event it has been a success story of just how heathly and how genetics have improved bentgrass over the years to bounce back in the heat. I have taken hundreds of photos and put together a time laspe photo to track the progress from beginning to now on #1 Green.
#1 Green 7/22/2011
#1 Green 7/28/2011
#1 Green 8/2/2011
#1 Green 8/8/2011
Steffie,
I thought that the divot party went really, seems like all participants enjoyed themselves and it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought. Wish we had had more participation, but life has taught me that 98% of the work is done by 10% of the people all the time. Curt, Karen, Phillip & I had dinner and a ber with Tyler afterwards. I really enjoyed getting to meet him. He really seems like a nice young man.