Disease update

The disease that popped up over night last Friday to Saturday has been successfully eradicated. The disease starts out and by infecting the leaf the fungal spore is one and then the leaf blade next to it in a circular pattern. That's what gives it the small ring appearance. If you look closely in the picture inside the damaged area you can see the new leaf tissue beginning to pop out. The damage should disappear very quickly.

By the way, there was so much wide spread disease outbreak this week some vendors had either run out of fungicides or are desperately low on supply. As a general rule I always have enough product to make two full applications of many different fungicides. We might now always have enough of somethings, but we always have enough plant protective products like fungicides. As you have seen, a fungus outbreak can become rampant over night and you have to be able to kill it immediately!

Hydraulic leak

There was another hydraulic leak on 5 green this morning. A high pressure hose on a roller blew a pin hole leak just after dawn. Fortunately, if you can use that word in an instance like this, only one pass was made. Unfortunately, a pass was made.

Front sign touch up

The front sign is getting a small landscape touch up today. I had the tall grasses removed from in front of the sign since they were always blocking the beautiful flowers. In their place a low growing juniper is being installed. This should do the job of stabilizing the slope, not grow up so high as to cause me to trim it all the time, and accent the beautiful sign.

Disease outbreak

The greens got an outbreak of a leaf spot disease last night. Erick noticed immediately this morning and came back in this afternoon and sprayed all the putting surfaces with a curative fungicide. We do spray the greens on a preventive program, but it would seem conditions were just too favorable for the disease. The damage should disappear quickly with the warm weather promoting optimal growth.




Bill Davidson, CGCS
The Country Club of Naples

Almost there

Although we are not quite out of the woods yet with the golf course following the ordeal with the preventive herbicide, today I was as giddy as a kid with a pocket full of money standing at the doors of the mall. Today I saw something on the course I haven't seen in a while...grass clippings. Yep that's right, little piles of grass all over the place left after the mowers cut the grass today. They say it's the little little things in life that get you by, and I was so excited to see these normally pain in the rear things this morning I had to stop and do a double take.

Needless to say this is a great sign that the course is improving and headed back towards our expectation level. I have some test plots of granular fertilizer out on the course to spot check the root development of the grass and as soon as I see the dramatic effect on turf growth from the granular fertilizer I will push the turf growth even harder. Since the preventive herbicide damaged the roots of the grass, there's no sense in applying a course wide application of granular fertilizer until I'm certain the grass roots have recovered sufficiently enough to be able to capture and utilize the food. It's close to $10,000 to fertilize the golf course so I want to be absolutely certain I am not wasting any material...or money.

Normally I'd end the post by saying something like "enjoy the extra roll" but right now I'm really hoping you hardly get any roll because that means there's lots of turf growth happening. For now, that's a good thing!

On the mend

Hopefully everyone has read the post on what happened to the course after the preventive herbicide was applied.  Well, I'm happy to show you that the course is getting better.  Here is some pictures I have taken to document the progress.

Here's 14 fairway

 

 

 

This is 14 red tee over the last 3 weeks

 

 

 

Some areas were so badly damaged that the chemical manufacturer agreed to pay for complete turf replacement.  This set of pictures is of the left rough on #9 by the fairway bunker.

 

The damage

 

The area stripped of the damaged turf

 

 

The area after new turf sod was installed

 

 



There are several areas around the course that already received, or is on the schedule to receive new replacement turf.  It is taking a little bit to get around to all the severely damaged areas as we are having to strip and lay 6400 square feet of sod a week.  That's a lot of grass.  The really great news as I said before is that the manufacturer of the chemical I used has agreed to cover the cost of the sod.  This week's sod truck will be #3 and we have another to do next week.  Just a reminder that all newly grassed areas are played as ground under repair.

 

You might of also noticed that all of the stripping spoils have been used to do some needed lake bank restoration work. I was planning on doing the lake bank work next summer, but with all of the grass and dirt we are moving around now it just made sense to initiate the project immediately.

 

 

Lake bank falling in due to wind erosion

 

 

A lake bank with the same erosion problem after the sod spoils have been installed.  The spoils will be raked out and tamped to compact.  The intent is to allow the sod spoils to take root and stabilize the bank during the dry season, before any rain or storm erosion takes place. 

 

 



CCN gets a checkup from the USGA

As part of our normal practices on a bi-annual basis the USGA is invited out to ask question and inspect the course's agronomics.  Also as part of our normal practices is to share with everyone the results of the inspection.  Please spend a few minutes and read the report on the health and well being of the course.

Clink here for CCN's November 2012 USGA report card