Shorter Days and Cooler Nights

The seasons are a changing and it's beginning to feel like winter out there. Let's just hope that winter this year includes rain!

  With the shorter days and cooler nights comes the need to water less and this is a good thing. The quarry pond is low due to the light rains we've received for the last 10 months and at this point we are in water conservation mode. This will make for some firm and fast conditions and a few more brown areas than a normal year. Normal rainfall from January to October is 16.5 inches. This year we are at just 3.5 inches for that same time span.

 The cooler temperatures we've had forces the warm season grasses (Bermuda & kikuyu) into dormancy turning isolated areas from green to brown. This is typical for the season and is nothing to be worried about. This is also the time of year when we cut and mow all fescue and native areas to prepare for winter and over seeding which makes for even more off color grass.

The fall aeration of the course is in full swing and we hope to complete the process by the end of the week. This includes the aeration, sanding, seeding and fertilization of all tee, approach and fairway areas. A slide on the benefits of aeration can be seen below....

All things considered, we are very happy with the course this fall and we're looking forward to a very wet winter. I leave you with a great quote from the good Doctor...

"The best golfing grasses vary in color. They may be red, brown, blue, dark green, light green, yellow and at times even white. A golf course that is consisted entirely of one shade of green would be merely ugly." - Alister MacKenzie

Thanks and we'll see you on the course!