Bumpy Greens...A Consequence of the Non Winter

The crazy non-winter of 2011-12 has had one very visible consequence.  Today is March 15 and a fair amount of the creeping bentgrass is still in its' dormant state.  The bentgrass is the bronze grass in the two pictures.  The mild non-winter has allowed more poa annua than normal to germinate.  The poa is light green.  The poa has a lot of seed stored in the soil, that has been tracked to the greens from the bermudagrass fairways that were not cleaned up over the last few years.  We have cleaned the fairways up dramatically over the last year and now they are poa free, so the seedhead cycle has been broken.  What we had to do so far, is spray all the greens with the growth regulator Embark.  A good question is "Mike why would you spray a growth regulator on dormant bentgrass?"  The poa is growing faster than the dormant bentgrass, causing a bumpy surface.  The Embark also regulates the seedheads on the greens.  Creeping bentgrass will NOT grow while the soil temperatures are still in the 40s and 50s.  It does not matter how much fertilzer you apply or what kind of foliar products you apply, it will NOT grow.  Once we aerify, the rootzones will warm up and the bentgrass will begin to grow.

With the poa controlled in the fairways, we turn our attention to the poa on the greens.  I am suprised at how much poa germinated on the Newport greens.  Seaside greens are older and constructed differently.  They are now mostly poa, so they putt smoother early in the season.  We will likely implement a strategy using the Growth Regulator Trimmit to curb the poa, until summer.  We likely will apply a preemergent herbicide in September for next winter.  Superintendents have been battling poa for decades.  There are some products on the horizon in develpoment and testing that may be promising.