May 22, 2016
GOLF COURSE SUPERINTENDENT UPDATE
Greetings to all, and thank you for your kind words of support and encouragement. We have worked very hard on improving the playing conditions of the golf courses and appreciate you recognizing our efforts.
We wanted to give you an update of our agronomic schedule for the summer, and into the fall overseeding.
MAY
We will be spraying a pre-emergent on the greens to prevent crabgrass. The slicer will be placed on the fairways and roughs to relive the compaction next to the cart paths. We will continue with the fertilizer program on the greens and adding sand to the bunkers at Torres. On the 16th and 17th we will aerate the greens at Canoa. Once finished with aeration, we will start to remove the desert broom and clean up the over grown trees from the cart paths.
JUNE
As the temps rise, the rye grass will start dying off quickly and will be gone by July. We will be prepping the areas that will require some Bermuda seed; these areas will be raked, seeded and topdressed with mulch and watered as needed. Due to the heat, we will be hand-watering the greens in the afternoons and using wetting agents to help prevent the loss of grass. We will be treating the greens with insecticide and spray the lake for weeds. On June 13th and 14th we will aerate the greens at Torres, and will also start our fairway and rough this month.
JULY – AUGUST
We will start lowering the heights of the fairways in anticipation of overseeding in September. By lowering the heights we will avoid any scalping of the Bermuda grass. We will also continue applying fungicides to the Canoa greens; treat the lakes at Torres and apply another round of fertilizer to the fairways at both courses.
In August, approximately 1 to 2 weeks prior to overseeding we will start backing off the watering of the fairways to dry out the course.
Later this summer, I will give you a detailed explanation of our overseeding process.
Respectfully,
Darril Kilmer, Superintendent
Canoa Ranch Golf Club/Torres Blancas Golf Club