Winter Dessication Cancel The title field is required!

1. Michail Sarkis

   
   12/3/2012 3:12 PM

   So I thought I would post this first and see what kind of response I get before acting. So it's been less than a month since I've blow out the irrigation system and it's already dry as heck out here (Casper, WY). We topdress and cover our greens and have a frost free set up to water greens (doing that right now). The problem is fairways, tees, and rough. For the past month we haven't had any precipitation and had temps in the 50-60's, and were under drought conditions for the whole season. Now my thatchy course is dry as a bone. You can see spots in the fairways that are tinder dry already and my GM was asking if we should charge the irrigation system up to start watering. I'm not too concerned with the costs, but I hate being reactionary. We are only one month into the "winter" and I don't want to blowout and charge back up every time there's a warm spell, but I need to have green grass come April 1. I cut a plug today from one of our many dry spot and put it a bucket of soil to see if it will produce green grass. To give you a snapshot of what we're dealing with, our average annual precip is about 12-13" and currently we're at 4.5".
   
   Thanks for your input,
   
   Sarkis Michail
   
   Three Crowns Golf Club

   
   
   
   
2. Tyler Daniels

   

   1 posts
   
   12/3/2012 3:12 PM

   I would start watering. Good luck!
   
   Tyler Daniels
   Wine Valley Golf Club

   
   
   
   
3. Rosenthal Gregg

   
   12/4/2012 4:12 AM

   Deep infrequent irrigation produces deep rooting, I would seriously consider a turn on and then a very good deep watering. It stinks to have to do that this time of year where you are, but one must do what it most important. Keeping the roots moist when the soil temps are still in growing conditions is definitly important! The surface turf may be dormant but the roots are trying to still grow some! I changed cups here in the Chicago area yesterday when our temperature went up to almost 70 and I coud see nice white roots going down on cups cut on the greens. When we have had some very cold weather prior to this, last week could not have cut cups as top few inches of soil was almost frozen so hard to cut cups on our soil based greens! We are also drier than normal but not near as bad as you are! Best of luck and pray hard for some rain!
   
   Gregg R

   
   
   
   
4. Jonathon Zolkowski

   

   0 posts
   
   12/4/2012 7:12 AM

   They have golf in Casper WY??

   
   
   
   
5. Michail Sarkis

   
   12/11/2012 3:12 PM

   Hey thanks for all the information, here's a quick update:
   
   First you Boston snob Z, yes we do have golf in WY!
   
   Second I cut a plug and planted it in pot and watered it and it broke dormancy great and is green as can be.
   
   I think it's tough to see really dry grass any time, although that leaf is useless now, it's really brown, and we're trained to think really brown is BAD. We finally hit some cold temperatures and everything is pretty much frozen now so I think we're out of the woods right now. I'm from Montana and am used to white winters, plus I love plowing the parking lot, that 1/2" of snow we got this weekend will not cut it!!!
   
   Once again thanks for the input everyone great that we all stick together!!!