FROST

With winter now upon us and significantly cooler weather, we now have to deal with the issues of frost on the golf course. Frost is formed with some condensation, or dew, on the leaf blade and temperatures near or below freezing point (essentially 38 degrees air temp and below). The factors that contribute to frost are wind, humidity, etc. This hardens or freezes the cell structure of the plant, which then are easily crushed by traffic from golf cars and even footprints. The plant then can no longer function properly. The damage can not usually be seen until 48-72 hours after initial contact. Depending on growing conditions, it could take up to even 3 weeks for the plant to recover. If golf car and foot traffic is repeated in areas where there is frost, it will in fact create total plant loss. Our greens were stimped at 8:00 AM this morning at 11.6 feet. Lastly, on an interesting note, we have only had to irrigate 1 time in the last 29 days.

New Assistant

I would like to welcome my new assistant Nick Reyes. He started a few days ago and is settling into the position. He came from Pelican Hill Resort and has grown up in the inland empire area his whole life. I look forward to sharing my knowledge and experience with him as this is his first assistants roll. He not only has a good outlook on his turf knowledge but understands the game of golf as well. Also a good player to add to that. Lastly our greens were rolling 11.4 feet at 7 a.m. this morning.

Rain is on its way!

Rain is to be expected starting tomorrow a.m. and lasting thru the day. With the anticipation of that we are getting all the drains cleaned out. Hole #12 will continue to be played as a par 3 until further notice. We got lucky with the rain last week because even though we totaled 1.5" it was a steady consistent rain. Not a heavy one like this one is projected to be. It also look like possibly more rain next Tuesday and Wednesday. With that I have not had to use any irrigation for the past 13 days and should not have to use any water in the near future. After the rainfall last week the greens had slowed down to 10.2 feet. I have this week already double mowed twice, rolled twice, and verticut this morning. Green were rolling 10.8 feet at 7 a.m. this morning. Lastly check out the maintenance building as we have decorated inside and out for the first time.

End of the month updates, bad lies?

We are now into the "non growing season" of our warm season turf grasses. With that there is more focus on detail and projects. This will continue thru February. This will be the last posting of our monthly updates until the weather warms up. For November we rolled 6 times, verticut 2 times, applied a growth regulator 2 times, and top dress 1 time. My goal is to keep as much turf and color in our fairways for as long as possible. I cant stress this enough but please respect all traffic control signs, stakes, etc. If you drive down the middle of #2 fairway in the shade areas it is almost bare turf. The stakes were moved down the middle to show all players what can and will happen if we do not rope off these areas of shade. Unfortunately holes 1,2,10 struggle with this the most.