week 14 update

Well another short week and lots of fog about this morning as i write this. The greens this week have had a lot of work done on them we have sprayed the weeds, treated the dry-patch, lowered the height and pumped some water into them with pennants and the McLeod cup and plate next weekend we want to get the greens a bit quicker for these events, so our mowing schedule will change to give us more pace and we have lowered the height of the cut from 3.75mm to 3.5mm
the big problem around this time of year is that the turf is in a transition period, as the night temps get cooler and less daylight for the plant to photosynthesize so the turf is trying to adjust to these new conditions thus it is easy to put the plant under stress which is a real problem.
turf is a funny creature a lot of what we do now only shows up several months later,for example at this time of year we must increase our potassium levels in the plant and also get as much root growth as possible to ensure that coming out of winter we don't get spring dead spot. a lot of people often wonder, why don't they(ground staff) just do this or just do that and get a bit upset when we don't go along with some suggestions, the fact is that without seeing the big picture and looking long term down the track, the actions we take now which possibly could be a quick fix to a minor problem at the present moment could actually lead to a major problem down the track so for this time of year our priority is keeping the turf healthy and as stress free as possible in to the winter proper as we don't want problems with the turf during winter or even worse coming out of winter in the spring transition stage.
well to all the pennant players good luck and to everyone else keep swinging pete