Summer is half over...

Hey all:
     Sorry for such a lapse in posts, we here at Wildflower have been extremely busy since we hit the ground running when we opened.  I am finally getting back in the office and getting things organized for the later half of the summer.  We had a great fourth at the course, with Friday's totals being well over 300 rounds played.  I want to thank you all for coming out and enjoying Wildflower.  Some things that we will be doing/ have been doing in the past few weeks:
     - you may have noticed that #3 green took quite a few steps back and in a hurry.  Last Sunday when we mowed in the morning, there was some LDS (Localized Dry Spot) on #3 and the PG.  When I came back around 3 pm, #3 had taken a huge turn for the worse.  Sorry for my lack of photos, but it's something that I'm not overly proud of.  Monday morning came around after a worried and sleepless night and I decided to go out and spray all 20 greens with what is called a soil surfactant.  At around 16 oz per acre, a little goes a long ways.  I often like to use the phrase : with golf course management, your dealing with thousandths of an inch and ounces per acre."  For those of you out there that don't realize that this is a blend of science and feel,  I encourage you to "read-up" on some of the golf course industry's many publications and blogs!!!
     A week later and #3 is slowly returning back to it's original shape, even thought we raised the HOC back to .155 to deal with some of the high temps and high humidity that was stressing the plants. 
    -  With the addition of the soil surfactant to the greens, we also sprayed all fairways and tees to combat the same problem that #3 green was having.  You may notice on many of the Tee boxes, that there are some severely dry areas.  When the thatch layer ( below the blades and crown of the plant) has the chance to dry out and you have an excessive amount of thatch, there is a tendency of that thatch to become HYDROPHOBIC- which means it is afraid of water.  Any irrigation you try to dump to it just simply runs off to a lower area and doesn't get the chance to work it's way into the soil where it is needed the most.  Our soil surfactant (Dispatch from Aquatrols) helps to relieve the surface tension of the thatch layer and allows the water to penetrate the soil where it is applied, thus relieving some of the stress of LDS.  Now, this isn't a magic bullet, but simply one of the steps in curing LDS on turf.  There are many studies being done showing the added benefits of applying fungicides to turf to not only combat the fungus, but to also strengthen the plant and aid the plant in relieving summer stress and heat stress.  We will try to get out and spray our tees and fwys with a combination of chlorothalonil and propiconazole, two systemic fungicides which work on a broad spectrum of diseases.  With the high consistent temperatures, the high humidity, and the somewhat lack of wind here in DL, there will inevitably be some Dollar Spot popping up; you may notice this disease on the nursery green approach and on some of the tees. 
     Dollar spot is a disease which loves having the sugars that the grass plants exude combined with the dew from the humidity at night not being taken off.  Dew+sugars+not removing dew=dollar spot.  Now this crude formula doesn't mean that anytime you have dew your going to have dollar spot.
    With my assistant being gone all this week and much of next week, our top priority after the Fourth of July will be maintaining the playing conditions with a little bit of irrigation expansion into areas that don't see any irrigation other than what natural rainfall we do get.    Coming from a golf course which ran around 1.3 to 1.4 million gallons of water each night to a golf course which only irrigates the fwys, greens and tees is quite a shock.  I am used to perfectly green from tee to green, and Wildflower was designed to let the rough go dormant in times of drought.  I know there will be some people out there that say, why waste the water on the rough, but you have to understand what a golf course really does for the environment in terms of being a filter for runoff and for the water that runs into our aquifers, lakes and streams.  I'm not overly-environmentally conscious, but every golf course superintendent has it on their agenda to reduce their chemical inputs, reduce their water usage, and overall make the landscape a more enjoyable place each and every day. 
     Our goal is not to expand the irrigation system to accommodate the 100+ acres and all the rough and prairie, but simply to expand the system to help some of the high traffic areas on the course.  There are many areas which receive no irrigation yet are extremely high traffic areas and you can see the consequences of cart traffic on these areas already.  Please accept our apologies for trenching this week, we are only trying to improve the golf course for years to come!!!
   Also- a special thanks to Jerry Johnson for coming out and trapping our little Caddyshack gophers... I think Mr. Johnson snared around 7 pocket gophers, the mnost famous being the gopher on 18 fwy.
   MUCH THANKS MR. JOHNSON!!!!!!