Leaving Your Mark

I've been wanting to share this topic for many years, but aeration week always gets crazy and I forget to take the picture.  I finally got the picture and you can see that a ball mark has more impact than just the mark itself.  This particular mark measured 4 inches in diameter! 

Aeration Dry Run

We've completed our aeration on the practice greens and we've got this falls major renovation work dialed in.  Because I rarely do the same renovation year to year, we have to tweak our settings accordingly.  Why do I change the practices year to year?  Our needs are always changing and maybe there is somebody doing something better that I feel would work well here. 

This year I used a new tool in the box to select the depth of aeration and that is a SPA report.   SPA stands for Soil Profile Assessment.  It evaluates the soil in 1" layers looking at both physical and chemical properties.  Most of our organic matter lies in the top 2"  and that's how deep we'll remove a core.  Why waste the kiln dried sand aerating any deeper? 

After we core aerate to a depth of two inches, we fertilize with calcium and organic fertilizer and then we apply sand to fill the holes.  We deep tine to a depth of 6" after that.  Those holes don't get filled with sand because we don't need them filled with sand.  It does however provide a channel for roots and water to go.  Once that is all done, we drag the green and call it good. 

Golfers will be impacted beginning July 30th. 

Barn Owl Release

These owls never get old.  Thanks to Lee Pauser and Valerie Baldwin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM69xI5oVGk&feature=youtu.be

Rain is Rain, Right?

Yes and no.  They're are many different types of rain events that lead to different playing conditions on the course.  

If I had my choice, I'd take an all day soaker like we had this past Sunday.  Over the course of the day we received 2.25" and if it hadn't rained Wednesday, golfers would have been off the path.  With that amount of rain, the soil profile fills to a point of saturation and eventually flushes out the soil profile.  It's similar in affect to the way we irrigate the greens. 

Then we have Wednesday's rain which was light in amount and intensity. It's crudely referred to as a pisser.  We received just .30", but we were arguably more wet from that storm than the storm on Sunday with 2.25".   What happens here is that the upper 2-3" absorbs this and holds on to it creating a wet surface. 

Then there's the gully washer which is described as a short heavy rain.  This rain comes in so fast that it flows off the surface to the drains.  Not good when the soils are needing water, but conducive to better playing conditions faster. 

No matter what type, you're not allowed to complain about it in California!   

200+

The number of days it's been since you've seen a blog post from Cinnabar Hills or the number of days since it has rained?  I wouldn't blame you if you answered with the blog post, but it is the later; rain!  Over the last week we've seen our first drops of rain since April 17th.  Things have greened up in a short matter of time and all in the California turf business can breathe a big sigh or relief.  Let me enjoy the rain for at least another week until you ask me "how soon can we get off the path".