Golf Greens & Extreme Weather

Just woke up this morning to see Chicago is flooded again after over five inches fell overnight. This after the Milwaukee area has been getting hammered all week with torrential downpours.

In the Ohio Valley and the Northeast rain, high temperatures and high humidity are wreaking havoc with the world’s finest turfgrass managers.

Folks, it’s get me to thinking that this is becoming an annual occurrence. In my 25 years in the business it used to be this kind of extreme weather happened once every 5 years or so, while over the past 5 years the crazy weather seems likely to happen every year and in most locales. Back home in southwestern Ontario my farmer friends were desperate for precipitation during the recent dry,hot spring. Now agriculture crops are drowning in rain and heat, not to mention trying to take a crop of hay off with rain in the forecast every few days.

Golf course superintendents http://www.gcsaa.org/ may be as stressed out right now as I have ever seen them, and rightly so as they try and provide golf playing conditions that their members have come to expect year after year. They have a host of issues in this weather from disease stress to mechanical damage from just attempting to mow their turfgrass. They have to mow right?, after postponing greens mowing for several days, they try and mow in a tight window between rain events as they are concerned the green will even get wetter with more rain in the forecast. They are in a no win situation and I definitely feel for them having been an assistant superintendent myself very early in my career.

Now I don’t want to appear like an ambulance chaser here, but most of our former past clients are in pretty good shape having installed our internal greens drainage system. XGD’s subsurface piping system is an important tool in the superintendent’s arsenal as they try and combat what Mother Nature has been throwing at them. But internal greens drainage is not a panacea for this extreme weather, rather we feel it is extremely important tool, among other practices such as good air circulation and some early morning sunlight will also aid in drying out the greens subsoil. I will also say this year several potential clients who have confirmed 2-5 green projects have recently contacted us to inquire about installing our subsurface drain system on all their greens. It is a reciprocal relationship we believe as we are helping our clients provide solutions to the long term agronomic success of their golf greens, while our clients help provide full time careers for our XGD installation teams.

I will finish saying that it cannot hurt to begin a dialogue with us at http://www.greensdrainage.com/ , just to discuss our process and see if it might be a fit for your golf green restoration.

Later, Poor Old Dirt & Grass Farmer