Fertilizing & Topdressing Fairways

Yesterday, we applied a fertilizer with pre-emergent to our fairways and rough.  This polyon material is a long lasting fertiler that releases small amounts on nitrogen throughout the growing season.  This product will feed approximetely .8# of nitrogen everyweek depending on the temperatures.  This provides consistent growth and color throughout the summer.  We will not fertilize again until the middle of September or around fairway aerification time.

A couple of weeks ago we had an outside contractor verticut our fairways.  This process removes thatch that has accumulated over time.  Removing the thatch has many benifits to the turf: 1)  Water will penetrate in the soil easier and will not be tied up in the top layer 2) Nutrients will not bind to the thatch and will be more accessible to the turf plant 3)  firmer playing service.  We hope to do this process once a year until we feel the thatch is in check. 

Verticutting Fairways

Small grooves created by verticutting

We have coupled the verticutting process with a lite topdressing on select fairways to see if we can build up a sand layer in our fairways which will provide an outstanding playing service. Our plan is to topdress once a month throughout the growing season and into the winter. The sand will also help dilute the organic matter or thatch. We already verticut and topdress greens and tees and now we are adding fairways to our program.