Conditions After The Snow

After the sun and warm weather from last week, the only snow that remains are a few piles hiding in the bunkers.  I was able to get a few pictures while inspecting the winter damage last week.  Here is what we have found:

These two pictures are representative of what the rough looks like now. Pink snow mold is very widespread in the rough throughout the course, and is worse beneath trees. It is worse under trees as a result of the weakened turf due to the lack of sun exposure, as well as the higher populations of annual bluegrass. Annual bluegrass is a weaker turf and is more susceptible to disease.

This is a patch of active snowmold on the edge of the first fairway.

There are a few locations around the course that are showing where we missed a spot with our snowmold application.  All of these spots are in the fairways and will grow out of the damage when the weather begins to cooperate.

This spot shows the benefit of the fungicide application for snow mold we make in the fall.  This is near the tree in 15 fairway.  We will probably end up over seeding this area to aid with recovery.

The tees and fairways on the course look good and only show a few isolated spots where disease pressure was too high for the snow mold application that was made.  The few spots that do show symptoms of snow mold look like the following picture.

A close up:

The greens have made it through the winter safely.  All the greens look good and show now signs of disease.  We did have ice cover over a few of the greens for an extended period of time, but no signs of an ill-fate from that either.

The two dark spots on the 5th green mark the location where we monitored ice cover on the green:

I took these two pictures to show the benefits of selecting a good turf species for a golf course.  These pictures show the difference in resistance to snow molds among the older grass varieties and the new varieties that were planted during the renovation.  No snow mold control was applied to this location.

Aside from the rough, the course is in good shape after the winter weather.  The rough will recover from the snow mold damage when the weather is will to accommodate growing conditions.  It won't be long!  Be sure to check here for updates on course conditions while the weather warms.