Game On!

Members of the Golf Maintenance Department have consumed 2.5 tons of sand while filling divots in the fairways this week. That's approximately 15,000 divots filled with sand and seed one handful at a time!

7,200 violas have been installed at various locations around the clubhouse.

Preemergent Crabgrass Control

In an earlier post I promised to inform you of the optimum timing for your pre-emergent weedgrass (crabgrass) application. The optimum timing for crabgrass preemergence is when the soil temperatures are between 50-55 degrees F at the 0-2 inch depth. This can easily be measured with an inexpensive meat thermometer inserted two inches into the soil. Check the temperature between noon and 2 pm. It appears now that the week of April 13th would be a great time to pull out that spreader and get some exercise walking around the lawn as temps are expected to spike.

A brown squirrel clings to a branch amid the buds on the Kentucky Coffee tree located on the south side of #17 fairway.

The Arrival of Spring !

We had a complete snowmelt last week and even experienced several good days of drying only to be followed by six more inches of snow. The calendar says Spring has arrived. The first hole says otherwise.

Seasonal Staff Returns

Seasonal Staff is in the process of returning for the 2008 season. It appears that the well-deserved winter rest has had a tremendous rejuvinating/reverse aging effect on them!

First Turf Disease of 2008

Pink Snow Mold can be routinely found on turf late winter/early spring in the north central region of the country. The disease can be especially devastating a bit further north during prolonged periods of snow cover where fungicides fail to persist long enough to combat the fungus.

The greens at Traditions were treated with pentachloronitrobenzene (pcnb) late fall 2007 and show no signs of disease breakthrough. The picture was taken Feb 26th in #2 fairway. Click on the picture to see the active disease (cottony appearance on the border).

The disease can persist into May even as the temps rise but is usually considered more of a pest than a problem worthy of an expensive, blanket fungicide application.

Weed Eradication

I took my first question yesterday (March 10th) regarding home lawn maintenance: “When the snow melts, should I put down that stuff to kill the crabgrass?” The answer was, “NNNOOOOOOOO!”

The accurate timing of preemergent weedgrass products is critical to their success. As a generalization, in northern Illinois a homeowner would want to apply the product no earlier than late April (following a warm spring) or mid May (after a cold, wet spring).

When the soil is wet and the temps remain cold, it takes longer for the soil to heat to a temperature warm enough to germinate the crabgrass seed contained in that cold soil.
Apply the product too early and there will be breakthrough of crabgrass later in the summer. Likewise, a product applied too late will allow the crabgrass to germinate early in the summer.


Here’s my good deed for the day: Come back to this blog late April and I’ll give you the application date.

Snow Capped Ice Layer on Greens

Golf maintenance staff removed snow from the practice putting green and applied potassium sulfate in an effort to accelerate the thawing process. At this point in time (March 11), it does not appear that the greens will suffer any turf loss as temps are predicted to be in the mid to upper 40's for the next 3 days with no significant icing events predictated in the near term. However, this can all change very quickly. It's March in Chicago!