Golf Course
I think we may have to give Florida a new nick name pretty soon…it has not been The Sunshine State
for quite a while now and according to the forecast, won’t be for a while to come.
The 7 day forecast doesn’t have a day of full sun on it which is quite unusual for Florida this time of year.
We have had 1.6” of beneficial rain in the last week. The rain along with not having to irrigate has kept our lake levels stable. However, the lack of sunlight along with cooler weather has slowed down turf growth substantially. The El Niño weather pattern established itself in 2023. El Niño patterns are drier/hotter in the summer and wetter/colder in the winter which is opposite of what we are accustom to.
I would like to thank Mr. Lawton for digging up some very useful data. I mentioned to him that I was looking for data on cloud coverage and he scoured the internet to find that and more. I want to share a few comparisons regarding our weather so far this year compared to the same period (1/1 to 1/10) last year.
Average high temperature (2022/2023): 80.07/72.36 degrees
Average low temperature (2022/2023): 63.27/57.09 degrees
Average cloud cover (2022/2023): 17.5/42.36 percent
Average solar energy generated per day (2022/2023): 12.59/8.13 kWh
Weather is the basis for how well the turf performs. Yes, we have inputs which help the turf maximize heath and growth, but they only have full effect when the conditions are favorable.
13.89 degrees colder (reduces turf growth), 24.86% increase in cloud cover (reduces turf growth and allows pathogens optimal environment to attack turf).
The cloud cover reduced the amount of energy that makes it to the plant from the sun by 4.46 kWh/day (35%). That’s the equivalent of a human who intakes 2000 calories per day being put on a diet and reduced to 1,300 calories. Reducing energy created by the sun impacts turf growth along with other processes including recuperation from traffic and injury due to disease.
In addition to the reduction in turf vigor, the weather also impacts our schedule which can have impacts on turf performance.
For example, this week we were scheduled to apply wall-to-wall granular on Tuesday and Thursday, spray fungicide on greens Tuesday & Friday but weather (wind/rain) pushed granular to next week, fungicide applications to Wednesday/Friday. Next week we had planned to spray TCAs/Fwys with foliar fertilizer but that will be pushed to the following week and this is all if we have decent weather next week.
If you have read this far, thank you. I’m sure you are saying, “we get it” the weather is bad so I will get off my soapbox for now and hope that the weather gets better soon.
I don’t have any pretty pictures of the course this week but do have some cool pictures of disease (Rhizoctonia solani) in the rough on hole 13. Keep in mind we don’t normally spray fungicides on rough since it has an easier time fending for its self but you can see why we do spray greens. If we didn’t they would likely look like this rough.
As it is, even with fungicide applications on greens, we still have some disease (leaf spot) in the picture below that we are battling
Some areas of the course that don’t drain very well are staying saturated from the frequency of the rain events. Again, all issues cause by the crummy weather we are having.
I hope this post didn’t come across as to much doom and gloom, I just thought it and opportune time to highlight some of the reasons why our course may not look as good this winter as it has in other years. As with all things, this will pass but for now we will do our best to deal with the hand we are being dealt.
I look forward to seeing everyone on the course, and as always, if you have any questions, flag me down or shoot me an email. I always enjoy talking turf!
