Early June Update

Philadelphia summer has set in here at the Crest the weather as quickly turned from cool and dry to hot and humid. We have already had two heat waves and it seems like there is a threat of pop up thunderstorms nightly. The maintenance team has the course ready for summer, and we hope that everyone is enjoying the Crest!

The Greens
The member members are nearly complete and the team is overall pleased with the green's performance during this run of holiday weekends and events. To ensure the continued health of the greens we will be completing our next round of maintenance verticutting, venting, fertilizing and topdressing next week. I continue to get asked, "Why do we verticut and topdress our greens so frequently during the summer?" The answer is a simple the grass we have A1 A4 creeping bentgrass was bred for the hot sticky Philly summers, but it can choke itself out by growing too aggressively during the summer. This growth cause a layer in the soil, as one of my professors at Penn State called it "turf snot", that will seal off the soil and cause a bevy of problems when the days get hot. By frequently breaking this layer through mechanical abrasion we keep our grass happy and healthy all summer long. 

The Tees
The tee boxes have recovered nicely form the aeration the other week. You may notice a few weak areas on them. This is annual bluegrass,  that is a secondary weed on our low cut playing surfaces. Because our tee boxes are so healthy we applied a herbicide to knock back this weed, and reduce its spread onto our other bentgrass surfaces.  

The Fairways
The modifications to the fairways agronomy program seem to be working. I have had many industry colleges comment on how good our fairways look, just by the drive down Blackrock Rd. We will continue to monitor them during the heat of summer.

Syringing
This summer the agronomy team will be out on hot days syringing the course. Syringing is the application of quick shots of water to cool the grass down during peak heat stress. You will see us using hoses and overhead sprinklers to cool turf off during the afternoons. Thank you for your patience as we make theses applications. We will typically be off any area in less then 3 minutes.