Glen Eagle Maintenance (3/25/26)

The golf course is looking pretty good considering the dry weather that continues to stay in place over our area of SW Florida.

As we wind down our busy golfing season, we are also in the driest portion of the year. From now until June is a critical time for water management and we are seeing the effects of that on the golf course already.

We have reduced irrigation in roughs by 50%, over the past week and I can see many areas turning brown due to the reduction.

The picture above was taken prior to any irrigation adjustments. Here are some since we reduced the rough irrigation.

We have also reduced common grounds irrigation by a third which will cause areas of turf and plants to become wilted and visibally off color over the next several months.

All of this is to protect the remaining water availability in our lakes until we start getting rain later this summer.

Here is a current picture of the lake level at the 3 Tee bridge

Where we are seeing these impacts the most is when we have an irrigation issue such as power or communication issues between controllers and irrigation stations. Missing irrigation cycles during this time of year causes hot spots that take extended time to recuperate. This was evident on the putting green over the past week where an extremely dry area developed on the slope causing an unsightly brown area.

Each one of the irrigation heads on our course has a decoder in the head that tells the head when to open the valve and allow the water to come on. When a decoder goes bad, it doesn’t receive the signal from the central hub (computer) to run the head. Sometimes when a decoder goes bad, it can affect other heads around it and none of them will work properly. When the visible dry spot shows up, it is a trigger for us to check the decoders in the area and replace any damaged decoders.

Once a dry spot has developed we have to get it rehydrated which is generally accomplished by hand watering the location with a hose and wetting agent dispenser to help retain water in the root zone as it is rehydrated.

Even though we are not reducing water on greens, greens have localized dry spots (LDS). This is due to higher daytime temps and reduced water quality as we get down to the lower levels of the lakes. Basically the bicarbonates and salts that naturally occur in our limestone lakes are more concentrated the longer we go without rain and the lower the lake levels get. This causes areas of the greens to become hydrophobic and repel water. To combat LDS, we pencil tine aerify greens, spray wetting agents that reduce the surface tension and allow water to flow into the soil and hand water the LDS areas.

As you can see, we have our hands full right now with water management and desperately want some rain.

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!