Moving On

Thursday was the last day of work for our assistant superintendent, Joey Hickok. Joey came to work with us in January of 2013 after earning his bachelors degree.  He had worked a summer with us a few years prior to his graduation, so it was an easy decision for me to hire him. His work ethic stood out to me as one of his biggest assets. He grew and progressed with us over 21 months and became a great assistant superintendent. 

Unfortunately he decided to move to Acworth and when a job presented itself, he needed to take it so he could move. 

The biggest compliments I could give Joey is that I had no worries about the way the course was managed whenever I had to be off property, and Georgia National is a better golf course now than it was 21 months ago because he chose to work here. 

Invasion of the Armyworms!!

We had our first outbreak of the year of Fall Armyworms today. You may have noticed them or their activity in yards recently. It usually starts around tree lines and looks like the grass is dry. If you look closely, you will see the worms eating the grass leaves. 

Here is a full grown Armyworm. They are green and have black stripes and they look like they have a black helmet on. 

If you haven't seen them, you have probably noticed their eggs on anything and everything outside. 

This is their eggs on our flags. They have been evident for a few weeks. The armyworms usually "attack" when we get some cooler nights, like last night. 

Here is the start of their activity on #12. You will notice the grass around the trees looks dryer than the rest of the grass. It isn't dry. That is the start of the armyworm invasion. They will eat an entire hole of rough in a day if they aren't sprayed. 

Here is some severe damage across the cartpath on #4. We will be spraying for them tomorrow with a product called Bifenthrin. They are pretty easy to control as long as you catch them early. 

Tree Removal

Yesterday we had Pro Tree Service come out to the club and remove some dead or harmful trees that we have not been able to get ourselves. They removed 14 trees in all and also ground a few more stumps for us. They did a wonderful job and took great care of the course while they were out there. 

Summer is here.

It appears that the heat and humidity is upon us again. We have gotten all of our fans greased up and ready to turn on. We will be turning them on tomorrow and they will probably run non-stop until after Labor Day. Please don't turn these fans off or push or pull on them. They are set at the right height and angles for maximum benefit for the greens. 

The greens are very healthy right now going into the stressful part of the season. Hopefully we will get a few breaks in the weather throughout the next 3 months to help our greens (and employees) recover from the heat a little. 

Please remember to be courteous to our employees in the afternoons when they are watering greens. It is a quick process to check the green and it only takes a couple of minutes if we have to pull a hose and water some hot spots. Please don't hit into the green when we are checking it or watering. Sometimes we have to jump in front of a group in order to make timely passes and check all of the greens as needed. 

Thanks for your understanding and support. Hopefully we will have a terrific summer. See you on the course. 

Fertilizing The Course

Today we had Harrell's Fertilizer come out and spread fertilizer on the course. We went with their Polyon product this year. They made us a custom blend with an analysis of 24-0-10. We went at a rate of 5.4 lbs per thousand square feet. This gives us a little over 1.25 lbs of nitrogen per thousand square feet. This nitrogen is mostly slow release to give us a consistent feed for about 5 months. The Polyon coating on the fertilizer ensures this slow release. This will keep us from getting big flushes of growth after rain events while maintaining a consistent green color throughout the growing season. We have used this product in the past and we feel it is the best product available. 

Sorry for the absence.

It has been a while since my last blog post. This is not due to a lack of work on the golf course. On 4/4/14, my wife and I welcomed our second child into the world. Bo Carter Brown was born healthy and happy. It has been a terrific 3 weeks. He weighed 7lbs and 14.5 oz. He was 21" long. Everyone is doing great (other than the usual sleep deprevation for mom). 

Time to buckle back down and get to the grind of providing the best course conditions possible. See you on the course. 

What a difference 5 days can make

The picture on the left was taken 5 days ago and the picture on the right was taken 5 minutes ago. Wow, what a difference. Once the temperatures got up into the upper 70's and lower 80's and we got a few straight days of sun, the greens growth has taken off. By the weekend, no one will even know we aerified greens. 

Greens Update

Here is a picture of the greens progress after aerification. The left pic is the day of aerification. The middle is 10 days after. The pic on the right is (yesterday) 16 days after. 

You can tell in the right picture that we have mowed the greens numerous times. The grass has started to grow over the holes. We are pleased with how far along in the healing process we are especially after the cold nights we've had after aerification.