Heat and Drought end with Wind and Rain

Wow, I has been over a month since I last posted but in reality not much had changed until now. Dry dry dry was the normal condition for the golf course. We went 41 days with only .4" of rain here on the south side of Fond du Lac with rain all around us. That ended early Thursday July 26th when we received 2.4" followed by .4" that afternoon and another shower Friday morning.
The rain was welcome as all of our ponds were down and the inefficiency of the irrigation system could really be seen with as many wet areas as dry areas. We had invested/wasted countless man hours in dragging hoses and hand watering over the past 2 months to keep key areas alive if not green.

Most un-irrigated places on the golf course are just dormant and will quickly green up although there are some areas that are dead and will need reseeding. We use a infrared thermometer to monitor surface temperatures of the turf to help gauge what time to syringe the turf with a mist of water to cool it down on hot days.

It is tough to grow grass when the surface temperature is 126!
This was taken in the rough on hole 12.

Cart traffic during the drought no doubt made things worse as what would normally be a slight wear areas became paths of dead turf. Also green turf that is under heat / moisture stress is susceptible to damage from cart traffic. The picture above shows a fairway that had traffic at just the wrong time and how the turf is damaged by the may wheels that go over it each day.



Cart traffic has a negative impact on turf under heat / moisture stress in the afternoon.

The negative of the rain is the fairways are a bit wet in places after weeks of watering tends to over-water some spots in a effort to get enough water to other places to keep them alive.  But the sunshine should bring things back to normal quickly this weekend. The real negative is the storm brought a lot of wind damage to the trees on the course. The airport recorded a 70 MPH gust early in the morning and I believe it given the damage we have seen.

In total we have 7 trees down completely and another 10 that are damaged to the point of being dangerous and they will need to come down. With the recent burn ban we have not been able to burn our burn pile so it is full from a summer of tree trimming. To accommodate the large number of downed limbs and trees we started a few temporary piles on the golf course to stockpile the wood until we can rent a chipper and mulch them up. This will be done quickly before the brush piles can kill the turf underneath.

Using multiple piles allowed us the opportunity to clean up more debris from the playing surface because it saved travel time to a single central location. We appreciate your patience during this time.


The Tent Was a Mess With Tables and Chairs Everywhere.

This damage near 23 tee was typical of what we saw throughout the course.

More of the same between hole 18 and 19



Many dangereous and hanging branches were removed.