Rain Day

It is a rainy Monday. The crew is off the courts and working on general landscape clean-up. Nate did a great job with the fall flower planting at the base of the cafe stairs.

Topdressing

Some close-ups of the sandy loam topdressing that is put on the courts. This is done at different times a year, especially after aerating and verticutting. It is then worked into the sward with a heavy mat. http://lccgrounds.blogspot.com/2008/09/topdressing.html for an earlier entry on topdressing.

Fall Renovations Continue

Pics 9-16-10

Summer Recovery

In the last blog entry John G. entered a comment about grass court #5. Thanks John - this is an excellent subject for a blog entry.
The hot summer of 2010 was definitely a time for plant selection. There are many different biotypes of Poa annua that exhibit different attributes. Some of the Poa annua plants on the courts were tolerant of drought conditions, some were disease resistant and some could tolerate the heat. In general terms, grass courts 4, 5, 8, and 9 were not very drought tolerant and began to wilt on the hot days early in the day. On these courts the balance between water and firmness of the courts was especially important.
During the National Father/Daughter it was hot, dry and the courts were playing well. At that time of year (early/mid August) the grass was even more susceptible to wilt due to weeks of hot weather that had decimated the plant root systems.
Court 5 got the worst of it, as the biotype on this court could not withstand the inhospitable conditions and we lost some grass.
The fall renovations are intended to have many positive results, one of which is promoting germination of seed from the Poa annua seed bank. In the picture below you can see new seedlings growing in the aeration holes and verticut slices.
The verticutting does not affect playability too much, but aerating certainly does. This year we used smaller tines in order to not affect playability as much as we would with bigger tines. We will come back and aerate these same courts with bigger tines later in the season when demand for courts is much less.

Fall Renovation Pics

Verticut, aerate, clean-up

Line Marking for Club Championship

Jeff barking at Tim to keep the lines straight. Notice Jeff is getting thin with all the verticutting he has been doing (despite eating a lot of the ice cream John G. brought in for lunch yesterday). The final picture is Tim with his marker - notice the AC/DC symbol.

Verticut

Fall renovations of the grass courts has begun. Courts 1-6 were core aerated and verticut three times. This year we reduced the size of the tines and increased the spacing between holes to maintain the firmness of the courts. Later in the season we will come back and use larger tines.

Click on the title of this entry to go to an earlier LCCgrounds blog post for a full explanation of the verticutter.

These are images from short video clips taken this morning - 7:00 to 7:05 am. I was hoping the 5 second clips would show the daily chores of the crew, but unfortunately the upload times were slow and not displaying properly.
Charlie readying soil for topdressing

Vic on the teaching courts

Tim blowing leaves off courts

Nate cleaning up litter

Neil and Steve mowing

Jordan moving nets for mowing and marking

Jeff and Wilson cleaning up after yesterday's final day of a tournament

Although September is here, the summer has not ended. With tempertures in the mid 90's we are still in summer maintenance mode of the grass courts. Heat and drought stress are still problems and not just to the grass. Many of the trees and shrubs around the property are still suffering. Disease pressure is also an issue. Dollar spot and Summer patch fungi are very willing to kill much of our grass if we let them - so our fungicide preventative program continues. Pictured is some summer patch with chlorosis of the grass leaves.

John Kaminski, turf pathologist at Penn State wrote this recently - As for summer patch (which I have been getting a lot of calls about), we are seeing breakthrough of even the best fungicide programs for summer patch this year. Resistance is not an issue with this disease. It is just that the extreme environmental conditions have proven just too much in situations where the disease is chronic or extremely severe.

Our case is not chronic or extremely severe but we do keep a watchful eye on it.

Below is the crew syringing the courts between the 85 and 90 championship matches. As always the water is carefully applied to maintain the delicate balance between having firm courts and healthy turf.