High summer temperatures and dry conditions have moved into the tri-state over the last few weeks. The following is a description of what we have done, are doing and plan to do to prevent a loss of the progress we have made to improve your course at Stillmeadow Country Club. We have made huge strides and this is the time of year where we could loose ground quickly.
This is a picture of a drought stressed area in a fairway. As you can easily see from the photo the two sets of cart tracks passing through the drought stressed area have only compounded the issue. This is one of many examples of why Stillmeadow Turf and Maintenance has chosen for the cart ruling to be "cart path only". This ruling will only be in effect on the days of extreme temperatures or on days with extremely low humidity which relates to rapid loss of moisture in the soil and turf. This is not a decision that we take lightly and you should know that we will have the carts off the paths as much as possible.
Reduced mowings.....Mowing is a huge stress on turfgrass and while we will do our best to give quality playing conditions daily, we also plan to reduce our frequencies of cutting to reduce the stress on plants. There is a potential that tees and fairways could get a little "fuzzy."
Watering practices....During these days of stressful conditions we also plan to have programmed syringes working on fairways. Our fairway sprinklers are typically wired in series of two. Within the series of two, the one sprinkler will be on the left side of the fairway while the second will be directly across from it on the right. We will call the two heads a station. Each fairway will water from green to tee one station at a time. Each station will also run for a duration of 2-4 minutes. These programmed syringes will usually start between 12pm and 6pm.
While there are many other items to our stress prevention program, these are the ones that we feel have the highest impact on a round of golf at Stillmeadow Country Club. It is our hope that the impact will be minimal while preserving our turf at the same time.
We appreciate your help.