Winter Venting of Greens

The Hydroject is used to in place of your normal aerifier during the winter months. As you can see from the pictures below it creates a tiny hole in the surface of the green to allow for venting. It not only makes a hole in the ground, but also creates a channel for oxygen and new roots to form. It is a similar process as to our summer aerification, just not as disruptive to the playability of the green.

Raul with the Hydroject in the reverse position.

Resulting hole from the Hydroject. To the left is a ballmark repair tool to give the hole some size reference.

Raul with the Hydroject in the forward position.

FROST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Frost on #3 rough on the morning of 1/19/14

Frost on #17 on the morning of 1/19/14


The frost blanketed most of the golf course that morning with temperatures hovering around 40 degrees. Some of you might be asking why a frost around 40 degrees. the only answer I can give you is that we were in the upper 30's for a couple of days prior to this frost. When you have upper 30 degree weather with no frost and then a 40 degree morning with heavy dew. It creates the perfect recipe for a heavy frost. At that particular moment that morning the ground temperature was colder than the air temperature, thus making it the perfect scenario for the frost.

As you may have noticed the tees and fairways had no significant impact due to the frost. the reason being for the lack of damage is associated directly to the size of the grass blade. The rough has a bigger grass blade resulting in more surface area for the dew to set on, which in turn allows for a higher chance for a good frost to set up on the grass blade.

Damage 4 days later after the frost around #7 tee box.

Poa Annua

Poa Annua on the #18th tee

Poa Annua is an invasive winter weed that causes many unsightly problems in the south during the winter months. If not taken care of in a timely manner, it could cause the weed to spread into other parts of the golf course.

We are currently spraying Poa Annua throughout the course as we see new areas pop up. They key to this is getting on it early before it has a chance to establish a stronghold in the turf.

In addition to us spot treating nuisance areas, we have applied another pre-emergent. to the turf to reinforce the one we put out in September. This should allow for us to gain control over future outbreaks before it spreads to other areas of the golf course.

Poa Annua in the rough #1

Since we had tremendous Poa Annua pressure last season, it will take some time to build up enough pre-emergent efficacy before we start to see a drastic change in outbreaks. To clarify, we will always have small pockets of Poa Annua no matter how much pre-emergent you apply. Controlling it from this standpoint makes it a task that is very attainable in the early stages of the germination process. Depending on the results of our control this year, we will look into other pre-emergent products for the winter months. In our industry we have many useful products at our disposal. The trick is finding the one that suits our facility the best.