Winter rules

During the winter, we are often questioned about a couple of winter rules.  The first item is frost delays.  Frost delays happen at any golf course and they are as difficult for us as they are for you.  Even though it may be good for coffee sales, we would prefer you on the course, not in the pro shop.  Because of our geographic location, our delays tend to last a little longer than other courses in the area.  For some reason it is normally a little colder in Moseley.

Frost Delays

Frost delays are used to protect the turf, especially our greens.  When frost is present on the plant, the majority of the time, this means that the plant is frozen.  When the plant freezes, the plants become rigid and cannot handle traffic.  Traffic that is put on frozen plants, crushes the plant cells and the turf can die.

This picture illustrates the damage that can be done by one foursome

This is what the damage actually looks like

Cart Path Only 

The other winter rule that we are asked about is our winter cart rule.  At the beginning of December, we go cart path only for the winter and stay that way until the March or April, depending on the weather.  As some of you may remember, in 2011, the bermudagrass at Westham was not in great shape coming out of dormancy.  After that spring, we decided, as a management team, that we would try being cart path only for the next winter to see if this would help the bermudagrass.  In 2012, we looked great. 

During the growing season, the turf is able to recover from injury, whether it is from traffic, drought, etc.  When the turf is dormant, it is not able to “grow out” of these stresses.  Dormant bermudagrass is especially susceptible to cart traffic injury.  When the bermudagrass is dormant, the leaf tissue becomes very brittle.  When a cart is driven over the turf, the leaves break off and left with only the crown of the plant.  Not only does this leave the plants open to other issues, it can also look really bad after an entire winter of carts driving on the fairways. 

Thank you for coming out and playing at Westham!  I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season!

Liquid overseed

This week we started painting the new sprigs and our tees and fairways on the existing ten holes.  Over the last few years, we have been experimenting with turf paints on our dormant bermudagrass.  We have found that the paint has really helped us with the green-up process in the spring.  The painted bermudgrass has come out of dormancy about a month earlier than the areas that have not been painted.  We have done a few different tests.  The first year we split a fairway right down the middle.  The next year we painted just tees and the last year we painted one of the last fairways to green up.  In all cases, the bermudagrass came out of dormancy much quicker when painted. 

This year we are painting all tees and fairways on the existing ten holes and all of the newly sprigged areas.  The existing ten holes are being painted to help green up earlier, but it also looks pretty cool.  In our testing, we have figured out how to get the paint job to look pretty good.  Painting the sprigged areas will give us a huge advantage in the spring.  The earlier we can get the new side to come out of dormancy, the quicker the can start fertilizing to finish the grow-in. 

We are looking forward to an exciting new year at Westham!

#2 after painting