Greens Winter Moisture Management

          Today, we partially pulled the covers off of our greens to allow us to water the greens.  We left one side of the covers tacked down, to make re-covering easier and more time efficient.  Luke, Hector and intern Austin went out immediately behind the crew of guys pulling the covers, and watered the greens.  Today was the first chance to water since we first covered them on Sunday, January 19th, due to the frozen ground.  We pulled covers on Tuesday, the 21st to add a layer of pine straw to the weak, and shaded areas of the greens.  Today was our first chance to take a look at the greens, and they definitely needed some T.L.C.  Using our TDR 300 moisture meters, we took readings of our greens moisture at a 3 inch depth.  We were around 4 to 7 percent.  We got the moisture content back up to 12 percent.

          An interesting observation - when we checked #15 green for moisture, after the cover had been removed,  the areas without any pine straw were at 6-7 percent.  The area of the green that had been covered with pine straw was around 12 - 13 percent.  This helps show that the extra layer of insulation, ( the pine straw) is helping keep the plant safe in these cold temperatures.  The upcoming forecast is showing lows back down in the upper teens, and lower 20's.  They are also forecasting up to an inch of accumulating snow on Tuesday/ Wednesday morning.  We are hopeful this will be our final arctic blast for the winter, but we will have to wait and see!

Here you can see the one side of the cover, is still stapled to the ground.