Golf Course Maintenance Weekly 9/26/16

The 2016  Fall Equinox occurred last Thursday on the 22nd of September. This day marks the end of summer and ushers in the 90 day fall period which is the ideal a time of the year for growing and recovery of the cool season turf here at Granite Bay.  Fall is the time of the year that the irrigation requirements of the course start to substantially go down and hence the playing surfaces firm up. Additionally it is the time of the year that we can safely start the aggressive cultural practices of turf aerification, topdressing and slit seeding without risking damage.

Mid morning long shadows from the trees on the right hand side of  #1 fairway on 9/22/16, the day of the 2016 Fall Equinox.

We overseeded the tees on the course a few weeks ago. Overseeding our tees is necessary as the base turf in all teeing areas is hybrid bermuda which will turn brown in the winter during dormancy. Overseeding is the process of  slicing and seeding ryegrass into this bermuda before it goes dormant with ryegrass. The ryegrass germinates rapidly during the late summer / early fall and will give us a nice green surface to tee off of this winter. When next summer comes along, the bermuda which loves the heat will dominate the ryegrass then we will start the cycle over again next fall.

Jogi & Miguel spreading seed on a prepared
hybrid bermuda target green in the driving range.

Balander applying sand topdressing to forward target
after seeding prepared surface.

Enrique using the FW topdressor to apply
sand topdressing to overseeded driving range tee.

You probably noticed the tees got a little "hairy" or long a couple of weeks back. That was because after overseeding we allow 14 days for the new ryegrass to germinate and root down before mowing for the first time. When we did mow them for the first time last week, we mowed boxes for a entirely different look for Granite Bay. We still have a little tweaking to do to the new tee box configuration but the look has been well received by the Membership.

New "tee box" on #9

The driving range tee was overseeded this week on Monday 9/26/16 as we needed to have it available for Club Championship the weekend of September 23rd and 24th. We will give the driving range grass tee at least 4 weeks for ryegrass establishment before re-opening  which will bring us to the end of October. In the meantime we will have to use the synthetic tee line mat for practicing at the driving range.

The above course aerification schedule was first published a few weeks ago in these course updates and is worth putting out there arain as the aerification season is upon us. We are going into aerification in pretty good shape so surfaces should bounce back from these cultural practices fairly rapidly. We will be incorporating a lot of seed (10 Tons) during the process into the fairways, green surrounds and rough which will need to remain moist to germinate and establish. The inevitable wet and softness that occurs after aeration as holes are opened, soil exposed and seed incorporated will be short lived. This is because fall weather with its short days and cooler temps creates the best possible growing, recovery and rapid germination weather we could ask for. After the aerification recovery and seed germination occurs we will be able to drastically reduce irrigation and eventually get to the point where we can turn it off.