Musgrove Country Club Update September 22, 2017

Greens:

Despite the delays caused by Tropical Storm Irma we finalized the double aerification and topdressing processes on Friday September 15^th.  We rolled the greens over the weekend several times to help smooth them. On Monday, we focused on preparing the worst spots for seeding. We seeded them on Tuesday and nearly ¾” of rain washed several of the areas so Wednesday we raked up the washed seed, repaired the areas, added seed and began watering. Thursday, we rolled and topdressed the greens again to help the smoothing process. Watering has begun to get the seed to germinate and will help release the fertilizer we put down to continue to have the greens recover. Today we will be mowing the areas that have good turf for the weekend

To get the seed to germinate and provide a good stand of seedlings we need to water several times per day. This will take about 8 minutes per green and we will be doing our best to avoid play. We seeded with a 50/50 combination of the AU Victory and Penn A-1 bentgrass. Both proven varieties for our area.

We are asking you to avoid walking or playing from the weak areas on the greens so that we do not disrupt the seed and seedlings as they begin to emerge. We should begin to see a green fuzz in 7-10 days. We will  be fertilizing weekly once the seeds up to get the seedlings to grow and get established. We will begin mowing as soon as the plants have an adequate root structure to prevent the plant from being torn out of the ground.

Collars:

You may have noticed while you were playing the last 2 weeks some of the collars around the greens had turned white. We had some weeds (goosegrass & nutsedge) on these collars and we used a herbicide to control them. This herbicide is safe on bentgrass. However, as a side effect it does turn the turf white and bermudagrass even more than the bentgrass. It will grow out in a couple of weeks. During my visit, this week the white was disappearing and the collars were turning green again. The goosegrass was dying!! We will be spot spraying a few more areas with this herbicide to eliminate some more areas of goosegrass.

We will be posting more picture to the Blog Site at http://gmsmusgrovecc.blogspot.com/  

#1 Green after aerification and the white collar growing back