FUNGAL DISEASE

The summer heat has set in and we are working hard to keep the condition of the course at a championship level.

We dial in our water management practices due to the drought stress we see due to the heat.

We also put extra resources into fungal disease management. We treated fairways this morning with fungicide to prevent and slow down fungal pressure. We put extra emphasis on 11, 12, and 13 fairways. Air movement helps reduce disease pressure and these fairways see the least amount of air movement.

We have Bentgrass fairways and they are very susceptible to fungal disease. Other courses with Zoysia do not have this issue. We want to set a reasonable expectation for our Bentgrass fairway condition. We will have some setbacks, but please trust that we will have the seeder ready to bring these areas back quickly.

The extreme pressure window starts July 1 and goes until August 15th. On August 15th we typically see lower night time temps, shorter days, and better growing conditions for out Bentgrass fairways.

Thank you for your continued support of our efforts.

WATER COOLERS

Matt and the crew are building water coolers. We are almost done with them. We have been taking advantage of the rain events to stay in the shop a few hours building these cooler houses. They will allow us to improve the look on the course while improving the cooler security for safety.

We should have them out this weekend for the holiday.

Nice work Matt!!!!

SOD

We have had a wet spring and it has been difficult to schedule sod installation. It is too wet this week and we will be busy over the holiday so we are planning to install the sod next week.

Thanks for your patience.

SPRAYING POLYMER TODAY

TOPEKA SOD FARM CONSTRUCTION is spraying polymer in bunkers today.  They have approximately 10,000 square feet prepared for spraying today.  After today we will have all of the front nine green-side bunkers ready for sand with the exception of 3 and 7.  We are going to eliminate the back right green bunker on 3 as it is basically out of plan and we are attempting to reduce our bunker square footage.  We are also going to re-shape the bunkers on 7 green as that bunker is too large and we can shape it into a few smaller bunkers that will be easier to maintain and still provide the architecture that was intended for that hole.

We would like to thank the TSFC crew for working through the cold days this winter to keep our construction project on track. 

HAGCSA SHOP TALK

We had a shop full of Superintendents in our maintenance facility this week for a discussion about bunkers and specifically the Better Billy Bunker system.  Jerry Lemons was here representing Better Billy and gave a very informative talk about bunker history, challenges, and opportunities.

It was a great venue for us to discuss each person's bunker challenges and how the industry has changed with some of the new technology that is available to Superintendents.  We had 43 Superintendents in our facility and we enjoyed the seminar.  

SPRAYING #6

This is our first training bunker.

FIRST DAY OF SPRAYING BBB

We had a very successful day today. We sprayed almost all of 6 and two green side of 9 today. We passed our certification today and we are ready to go full steam ahead weather permitting.

BETTER BILLY BUNKER TRAINING

Tonight we are learning about bunker Construction and the Better Billy Bunker System. Adam Lemons is here training us on the install and maintenance of the BBB System.  The weather looks like it is going to hold up for us to spray bunkers tomorrow.

MELTING SNOW

We scheduled for the Better Billy staff to be at Staley Farms to certify us to spray this week. We are trying to stay on track so we are melting snow to prep the bunkers for polymer this week.