What Stinks?

The odor you smell on the golf course is the odor of going green. We are spreading an organic fertilizer made from chicken manure and it does have a strong smell to it. Every spring and fall we apply an organic fertilizer and we are seeing gains from it now. We see gains from organic fertilizers because they feed the soil which feeds the plant over a long period of time. Synthetic fertilizers typically feed the plant only and you will continually have to apply them to get the desired results.

The smell should dissipate throughout the day and be all gone by Thursday afternoon. It is a small price to pay for being green.

The Lake(s) Course

These pictures of the lake course are certainly an example of areal flood occurring as AccuWeather stated. It has been a while since I have seen this kind of rain and it was pretty impressive.

The only good thing about this kind of rain is that most of it runs off so the course will dry out more quickly

New Tool for 2011

One of the latest trends in greens management is the use of digital soil moisture meters. They are a probe that measures the electrical conductivity of the soil and converts that to percent water. The technology has always been fascinating to me being that I like quantitative data, but prices for these units were in the thousands of dollars.

Thanks to a tip I got from a Turfnet member, I was able to buy a soil moisture meter for $195.00. This unit has very few frills, but what I hope to do with it is to establish trends. Trends I hope to establish are what amount of irrigation run time I need to achieve a certain percentage at a certian depth, determine how long a certain amount of applied water will suffice until the next watering, what percentage should we start to hand water before wilting occurs, and what percentage is acceptable after hand watering. If I can establish some positive trends with the device, the unit is priced accordingly so I could by it for all of my greens hand water guys.

The ultimate results will be even higher quality green surfaces and additionally save a bit of water.

Give a Hoooot

All of us at Cinnabar Hills are extremely proud to announce that the first pair of Barn Owls have arrived. Lee Pauser was out on the golf course this past Tuesday making the discovery. You can also watch a 10 second video clip that Lee took here.

Now that the eagle, I mean owls, have landed, Lee will be out weekly monitoring the other nest boxes and also checking for eggs. I hope to have more good news to report in the upcoming weeks.