TIME TO START SEEDING

With the chance of Hurricane Isaac pushing some rain our way this weekend, I recommend seeding your lawns starting this week.  I always use the first of September as a guideline for optimal seeding conditions. 

I recommend verticutting your lawns and removing all of the old dead grass and plant material with a bagger or rakes and trash bags.  Then you will incorporate your seed into the top 1/4" of the soil.  You don't want to go too deep but you must get seed soil contact to germinate seed. 

Apply a starter fertilizer at the time of seeding and then begin to water the lawn.  It needs a good soaking daily and if you have an irrigation system I recommend running three cycles per day of approximately 10 minutes per cycle until all of the seed is uniformly germinated.  Then you can reduce your watering to once per day if there is no rain to supplement the soil moisture level. 

FALL GREENS AERATION

We are aerating greens today. We are using 1/4'' hollow tines. September is a huge golf month so we choose to aerate now so the greens will be table top smooth all September.

The 1/4" tines will have a minimal impact on the putting quality of our greens.  They will be putting well the day of aeration.  We incorporate the sand and roll the greens to provide a quality putting experience during this aeration process.

We are currently testing our greens with ISTRC http://www.istrc.com (International Sports Turf Research Center) to determine what our October aeration process will be.  We will adjust our tine sizing and spacing to reflect the soil physical properties and the maturation of our new greens profile.  

CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS

The capital improvement schedule is progressing with the latest upgrades including a brand new cart fleet.  They are awesome and I am so excited to see this much needed improvement.  We also completed some back of the house items including an irrigation update consisting of new handheld radios, new transmitting antennas and FCC compliance with our FCC license.

The impact on the golf course will be more consistent irrigation control. 

Other scheduled capital projects this year will include two utility carts and a greens mower.  We are excited!!!!