Greens Venting

Venting is an important practice on bentgrass greens throughout the hot summers.  Venting, or creating open channels for the movement of air, water, and gases in the greens profile, is critical to the health of the greens.  There are several different ways to vent, but we have found that venting with solid tines works best for us.  We use a variation of tines, with a wide range of aggessiveness. 

We have vented greens the last two weeks with very small (.2" diameter) pencil tines.  This is the least aggressive form of venting that we do.  It has very little effect on the playability of the greens.  In addition to the pencil tines, we also pulled small cores around the outer perimeters of the greens this week.  We went 30" wide and used .2" inside diameter (.36" outside diameter) coring tines.  We chose to be more aggressive on the edges and provide more relief, as these are the areas that encounter the most stress.  We chose not to fill the larger holes on the perimeters with sand, but we did lightly topdress all of the greens this week.

Our goal is to hold off of the more aggressive venting until two weeks after the Member/Member Tournament, when the Founders Course has opened back up following their greens aerification.

a green after venting with .2" needle tines

a green immediately after aerification of the perimeter with .2"id coring tine

a closeup of the perimeter, taken this morning, after mowing and rolling

Steve Weisser Visit

Steve Weisser, of Rees Jones, Inc., paid us a visit this week.  Steve was the lead designer of the Legacy Course.  We brought him in at the request of the Building & Grounds Committee to provide guidance for future course improvements.  We had a really good visit!  I will go more into detail about his recommendations after I have received and reviewed his follow up report. 

    The braintrust deep in discussion about the landing area to the right of the fairway on #6

L to R: Steve Weisser, David Jones, Steve Smith, and Dave Kuykendall

Here is a link to Steve's bio:  http://www.reesjonesinc.com/steve-weisser.php

Updated Moisture Index

As you can tell from the index below, we have seen a dramatic improvement in soil moisture in the last two weeks!  We are now at a rainfall deficit of only .35" year to date, here at the Legacy Course.  It is amazing how quickly the weather can change in Alabama!

Drought Relief!

We have received some much needed rain over the past 6 days!  We recorded .80" last Friday, .50" yesterday, and have received .30" already today as I write this, with a good chance of more rain today and through the weekend as well.  Our irrigation supply lakes could use a lot more, especially the one behind #11 green.  It is about 6 foot low right now, which equates to approximately 10 million gallons of water.  As a point of reference, our average monthly useage May - September is about 6.2 million gallons per month.

Dry Weather Continues.

The map below gives a very good perspective of the dry conditions in our state right now. In the past 41 days, the Legacy Course has only received 0.62" of rain.