Guest blogger superintendent Justin Ruiz
Monday, June 25, 2012
by Kari Soderberg
This summer, BASF Turf Talk is featuring several superintendent guest bloggers from around the country. Each guest blogger will share their top management practices to keep their courses’ turfgrass healthy and playable this summer. Read on as Justin Ruiz, superintendent at Indian Summer Golf and Country Club in Olympia, Washington, shares his insights.
To keep our fairways and greens healthy this summer, we have a liquid fertilizer program we are pretty disciplined about; it’s applied every two weeks.
Preventative disease control is another practice we do. For any fungicide application, we keep an eye on the weather. In Washington, it’s much cooler so we can have snow mold pressure until June.
We get a lot of rain in Washington, so we always try to monitor our water usage to make sure we aren’t using our irrigation system when it’s going to rain or when rain is expected. It’s important we try to keep things as dry as possible.
Luckily, it’s been pretty decent this spring. However, the beginning of May was pretty wet. We are always trying to stay ahead of Mother Nature. Now it’s getting humid, so we are keeping an eye on disease pressure.
Fortunately, our members are pretty happy this season. We do a lot of cultural practices to keep green speed up because they enjoy the faster pace. Verticutting and spiking greens help keep the surface open, which helps oxygen flow and keeps disease pressure down. It also keeps the greens smooth and fast.
Learn more about Justin and his turf maintenance practices on his blog “Indian Summer Golf & Country Club Turf Maintenance Blog” http://www.indiansummergolf.blogspot.com/
Posted at 12:16 pm
About the Author
Kari Soderberg
Kari Soderberg is a public relations professional for Padilla Speer Beardsely in Minneapolis, MN
