Sprigs Down and Establishing

Current Update 6/23/2015
After two long days of preparing damaged areas for new sprigs and two long days of planting sprigs we have finally gotten to the grow-in phase.  The team that worked on the actual planting of the sprigs was a combined effort of both the golf course maintenance staff and the golf operations staff and everyone did a phenomenal job for what can only be described as extremely hard and dirty work under very hot conditions. Speaking of hot, the weather thus far has been near ideal for sprigging with daily highs well into the nineties and a few timely rain showers.  The first two weeks of the grow-in phase will primarily consist of keeping all the sprigged areas at or near the saturation point 24/7. Each and everyday will be spent making sure all the areas are kept in a near flooded state.  This is accomplished by running small irrigation cycles every hour of the day. As we go through the process and the sprigs begin to develop new roots the frequency between cycles will be slowly decreased.  If all goes well the sprigs will develop a sufficient amount of roots by the third week of the grow-in that we will be able to begin to dry the course out to the point we can once again start mowing everything. The mowing phase of sprigging is also very difficult to watch.  As the course is saturated throughout the first two weeks of the process it is very difficult to mow areas in close proximity to the sprigged areas. With the heat, the water and all the fertilizer the unaffected (non-planted) areas near the sprigs will grow to very tall heights in between mowing cycles.  Therefore, once we do begin to mow non-sprigged areas we will have to raise mowing heights to prevent majoring scalping and there will still be certain areas that will remain wet and as such tracking from mowers is all but impossible to avoid.  We will begin mowing the actual sprigged areas, most of which are in the fairway, at a height of 1 inch.  We will begin mowing these areas sometime in the 3-4 week timezone depending on their level of root establishment. It will take another 2-4 weeks before the new growth will allow mowing heights to be returned to more suitable playing levels.  If all goes well we would expect to see a much more presentable course by the first week of August.

Sprigs Day 1

Sprigs #13 Day 5

Sprigs #1 Day 6

When Will the Course Open and What Should Members Expect to See
Just six days into the process it is still too early to set a re-opening date.  The date will be predicated on how well the sprigs are progressing and whether or not the course will be playable.  Playable for this purpose would mean that golfers can retrieve their balls from the sprigged areas and will have a reasonable area to take relief. We expect to make a decision on how and when the course will be opened by the second week of July and will communicate our decision to the membership in a prompt fashion once such a decision is made.

Greens Aerification
The abnormally hot weather has been great to try and establish nearly 9 acres of new Bermuda sprigs but the cool season Bentgrass greens have begun to show signs of stress.  As a precautionary measure we decided not to core aerify the greens at Irving Park as was originally scheduled.  Core aerification of Bentgrass greens during extremely hot spells like the one we are currently entrenched in will do more damage than good.  Removing the cores from the greens and topdressing with large amounts of sand would result in a lot of unnecessary abrasion and stress, which could hasten the onset of decline. As such, the decision was made to just solid tine aerify the greens and defer any topdressing treatments until we see a cooling off period.  As this hot spell is much earlier than normal for our region we have also raised the mowing heights on the greens at both courses, which will result in a slower green speed.  We will continue to monitor weather conditions as they relate to the greens and will make the proper adjustments if we see the current temperature trend change in either direction.

1/2 inch solid tine aerification

1/2 inch solid tine closeup