Not a very promising forecast for the last round of the Club Champs tomorrow so hopefully it won't be as bad as forecast.  Although the forecast was correct for quite mild days and even milder nights this week so an application of fertiliser to the River greens has seen a surge of growth which they have desperately needed.  It is the first time for months that a fertiliser application has actually realised some real growth which isn't ideal coming into round four but very necessary for the health of the greens.

I have mentioned before about looking for signs elsewhere in nature for a turn in the weather and perhaps the re-appearance of sandflies this week might be one, albeit an annoying one.  Other's that I look for include when some of the common couchgrass varieties throw up their first seedhead and that also happened this week and Jacaranda's flowering but that is yet to occur yet.

I have had a couple of members ask about the soil moisture meter that I mentioned last week. The meters have been around for some time and are a very good tool to use in greens management in particular, and they are one of only a few actual physical measurements that can be taken on golf greens. Every soil profile varies in its make up and therefore it's moisture holding capacity so there is no actual ‘’official’’ number that you need to get to. Generally most superintendents know the number that their greens need to be at and they also need to know the number where the greens will start to stress.  In our situation the greens sit somewhere between 20 and 25% and when they are dry and stressed they are down around about 10% and that is when you know that you need water. I generally try and keep them at about the 25% mark which isn't easy with the amount of rain that we get but even after significant rainfall the actual measurement is rarely more than 40% due to the drainage capacity of the profile.  Just out of interest, in the old Bentgrass days if the greens were under 30% at 6am on most summers days you knew that they would be severely heat stressed later in the day.

The photo below is of the crew prepping 10R for play last week for the Qld Championships.  Hopefully the weather holds and we get to do that tomorrow morning!!??

 

Let's hope it's fine?