Turf – Planning for the Holidays

This blog is not about all the fun parts of the holiday season, the relaxing, putting your feet up, cup of mulled wine parts. Its about the bit you have to do to get to the fun parts, the steps we take before, which allow us to switch off when we're off.

Turf management at winter

Its also not about the things we do over the break, pictured me BBQ’ing a turkey for Christmas dinner, it ended up looking great but tasting terrible, way too smoky.

If you want tips on what to do food prep wise you’ll be after: https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/turkey-recipes/the-best-roast-turkey-christmas-or-any-time/   12 ‘simple’ steps to success.

My top tips for BBQ’ing a turkey for Christmas would be:

  1. Practice on something smaller first, chicken breast, then whole chicken
  2. Get a meat thermometer
  3. Wrap it in foil for the early stages
  4. Don’t be in a rush (mine was served up 2 hours late due to a miscalculation on the amount of fuel needed)
  5. Don’t do it!

 

If you still want to ruin Christmas, don’t follow my pointers, webber says it best. See here.

 

To the point

The problem with the holiday period is (Christmas cheer aside):

  • Runs 24th December to 4th January (12 days) some variance in that but courses will be down on staff (generally skeleton crew)
  • Due to weather conditions, opportunities for recovery if you do see turf damage, are minimal
  • High levels of of golf traffic over the period
  • Due to skeleton crew reduced capacity for maintenance in that period

What’s to be done?

  • Keep an eye on the weather
  • Keep on top of cultural controls, especially if the weather looks like it wants to push the disease agenda (dew control, adequate nutrition…. listen to On the horizon for more details)
  • Consider a preventative fungicide application

 

Open in Spotify

The Microdochium pressure will be climbing again now its turned mild, so don’t be caught off guard. Wednesday (21st December is looking to be back to high pressure) on the live disease map.

 

A huge change from the map in just last weeks blog on Microdochium mitigation!

Hope everyone has a good break, and manages to take some time to switch off!

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