Good Morning,
The past week brought us some much needed rainfall and a decrease in the hot temperatures and high winds. When the wind blows at high speeds during the day everything dries out rapidly. Night time winds can wreak havoc on the irritation system blowing the water from the sprinklers. It has been next to impossible trying to keep up with enough irrigation on the golf course. There were dry areas showing up on collars and on parts of greens. Staff and I spent a lot of time hand watering and adding extra run time to irrigation in these areas.
I was able to aerify the greens with needle tines early in the week. This aerification process gave us about 5-6″ of depth and helped move the water down into the soil profile. The majority of the isolated dry areas have recovered very nicely as the week has moved along. Early the coming week I will be applying a foliar fertilizer and wetting agent to the greens. The wetting agent helps keep the moisture toward the top of the soil profile and helps control isolated dry areas. Lots of water, wetting agents, and more water are the only way to combat isolated dry areas.
During these extreme conditions I reduced some of our mowing practices to help with stress on the turfgrass. For example, we might not have mowed greens on a day when the wind was forecast at 35 mph or skipped a fairway mowing schedule to give the grass a break. Mostly small changes trying to protect the grass as much as possible without changing the day to day playing conditions.
The tile issues continue to move in the right direction at Stoneybrook and Upper Waterway Park. Public Works officials and I met with the tile contractor Thursday morning to discuss moving forward with repairs. The road will be opened up, near the 15th tees on 4th ave SW, to install tile across the road into the waterway. The road repairs will then be completed and tile will be installed moving east. We will tie in the four existing tiles south of the waterway on the golf course. This repair should eliminate any more standing water on the golf course or in the neighbor’s yards at Stoneybrook.
Upper Waterway Park will have tile exposed on the far east end where repairs were completed last year. The tile will be evaluated moving west through the park. We are hopeful tile repairs will take care of the issue but also prepared to install new tile through the park onto the golf course property and tie it into the drain by the 9th green.
Happy Father’s Day to each of you! Hopefully you have some family time in your plans for the day. Please contact me with any comments, questions, or concerns.
Brian C Mohr
Director of Golf Operations
City of Spencer
Spencer Municipal Golf Course
Spencer, Iowa 51301
712-260-5370
Spencer Municipal Golf Course 