This weekend was quite a test for the golf course and most people in the Metro Richmond Area. People across Virginia and a lot of the east coast have been hammered by oppressive heat and heavy thunderstorms. The golf course experienced a great deal of high temperatures and two heavy thunderstorms. Course cleanup, water management, and syringing dominated our team's priority list this weekend. On top of all of these normal challenges, the club lost power for over 24 hours. This presented many challenges and the largest in our department was the loss of power to our irrigation pumps. Without the ability to pump water, managing green moisture and cooling greens during the heat would be very difficult. We were able to maintain the ability to pump water by using a generator to power our pump system. Many thanks to Dusty at Hertz Rental and Scott and Donnie Farmer with Farmer's Electric for getting us the generator late on Friday night and for connecting the generator to the pump system. Farmer's electric is also wiring all of the fans on the golf course. To date, the fan on #1 is operational and the fan on #15 is wired and waiting for a few key components. These components are hard to come by because they have to be rated for flooding. That fan on #15 is temporarily running off of a generator.
The greens held up extremely well. They are slow and soft but this is all preventative measures to protect the greens during this period of high stress. The speed or lack thereof comes from raised mowing heights and a reduction in double mowing or rolling. The softness comes from a lot of greens venting, the June core aeration, and the overnight thunderstorms we have been experiencing. We are employing measures to maintain the long term health of the greens and during the cooler months, we will use firming methods to provide firm, true putting surfaces. The rain has been great for the other surfaces and has filled the quarry. This is one less thing to worry about.
This week looks to be hot and may have a lot of afternoon or evening thunderstorms. This combination of heat and moisture could lead to disease or wet wilt. Wet wilt is when oversaturated conditions heat the water up in the green at cause the plant to over heat from the ground up. We are approaching this week very conservatively but will be aggressive with our drying and disease prevention techniques. Greens will be tested again for disease tomorrow morning. To date, we have had no disease. The low areas in greens that tend to hold water will be vented and then greens will be sprayed with a preventative fungicide and turf screen. I am very happy with how the young turf handled this first real test of the year. Temperatures of 106 could have been very detrimental but with our proper management techniques and preventative measures, everything handled the stress wonderfully. Thank you to the entire club staff and specifically our management team for the long hours in the heat and for making it work this weekend. The power has been restored to the club and our pump station. Every one of us should be very thankful for the hard work Dominion Power and their crews are doing to get everyone back on line. Those men and women are also battling long hours and heat to make sure that we can all live with the normal comforts that we are accustomed to. I am glad to get over this first hurdle and am excited moving forward. We still have a lot of summer left, but the greens have shown that they can handle the stress.
Have a great holiday week,
Jordan Booth
jbooth@willowoakscc.org
Sunday, July 1, 2012
The first real test of the Summer
