Spring has sprung for sure—it won’t be long until summer! As the season gets rolling, distributors are very busy trying to get customer orders shipped and delivered.

At a local GCSA meeting this past week, I got a chance to talk with several superintendents about their spray strategy and programs so far this year.

Everyone said they had aerified their greens and put down at least one fungicide spray. But early fairway sprays are being put off, because as expected, many superintendents are trying to stretch their budgets.

On another note, I completed the Driving Dynamics course. It was informative and challenging. It was good to learn how my vehicle would respond under emergency braking and maneuvering.

That’s it for now.

I spent a couple of days in the field with Campbell Cox earlier this month in the Athens/Atlanta, Ga.-area and visited with two golf course superintendents and one distributor sales rep.

Day 1 started off with a cool morning ride along with Ken Mangum of the Atlanta Athletic Club. Ken has been the superintendent there for 20 years and last year was trying out some Trinity™ fungicide. He has been pleased with the results but understandably doesn’t dive in head first with any new product on the 45 holes at his golf club. A measured approach to golf and golf course maintenance is key here.

(more…)

I just want to talk about the week at Farmlinks. Fred Eckert and I spent the first half of the week together and then I had a group of 21 come in the last half of the week. I will admit that it is truly a great experience! I can not believe that there are that many truly nice people in the South who really enjoy their jobs at Farmlinks (outside of BASF of course). The staff is so down to earth, wonderful, helpful and really nice. It seems the South is really a great place to live.

As a side note, I was able to spend the week with Brian Thompson. He is going to fit in so well with the FarmLinks team. He will do BASF proud. He has the knowledge, capacity to learn our products, excellent understanding of a superintendent’s job and is a great person.

(more…)

Current weather patterns for much of the territory are forecasting over the next 15 days to be low temps in the high 40’s to low 50’s and high temps in the 70’s. Rainfall patterns are in the forecast, but a drying trend seems to be developing. If the dew points increase, we should have a recipe for early season disease pressure.

The Michigan State University Snow Mold Field Day held at the Tree Tops Golf Club in Gaylord, Mich., was re-scheduled to this coming week.

(more…)

We went fishing on Wednesday April 9th. Randall Pinckney from Manor CC in Rockville, Md. caught a beauty!

All the guys wanted to try and one up Randall. Steve McCormick from Columbia CC came pretty close yesterday with this nice catch.