6/15/2022 6:06 PM
Did a trial series on 5 greens. 1 sprayer pass on putting green, chipping green, #1, #9, and #10. 2 aps late last fall and 3 aps from Mid April to Mid May. 1/2 bottle for each trial ap.
No mechanical stress, no Paclobutrazol, etc. Followed protocol as perfectly as we could, including me (I am THE spray tech) spraying in the rain after the irrigation was blown out, once at 6 am on Sunday morning, in the dark, in November since it was raining.
Trial to see: how much poa we have on 30 year old Pennlinks on USGA greens, how much and how fast the poa would die, and recovery time for the bent to grow over the poa spots.
Poa spots were lit up coming out of winter. Pictures on our FB page, Bear Slide Golf Club Grounds Maintenance. Poa did die down to the soil leaving poc marks mid May, but most about ball mark size. Now that it is freakishly hot, the bent is exploding and filling the voids nicely. Updated pics will be posted soon.
What we learned: Our greens really don't have much poa as we already suspected. For 30 year old greens some have almost zero poa. The putting green has the most along with 16 green. #9 has almost none. The void spots are tolerable and barely affected ball roll. About 80-90% kill this first round. The application pass areas look like newly seeded turf, almost pure bent. As the Moghu rep said, this is an at least 2 season process.
We will be doing all greens the next couple of years, except we will only do 1/2 of 16 green the first year so that our annual state am tournament and other important spring events have the other half of that green available for pin positions. We will then do the entire green the second year.
I have seen courses that I would absolutely not use it, including one of our nearby neighboring courses with newer greens, as they would have bare greens.
Expensive, but as I told my superiors, a lot less costly than closing the course for a few months, as we are higher end daily fee, plus the cost of the conversion.
Chris Thuer, CGCS, Bear Slide Golf Club, Cicero, IN
Last modified on 15 Jun 2022 23:06 by Christopher Thuer