Over the past couple years we have been exploring different ideas of making the Vamont Bermuda fairways more playable during the winter months. One down side to Vamont is it’s inability to retain the leaf blade just before green up causing a thin playing surface on the course. After several other methods of trying to alleviate this situation we are trying a new concept that has originate from bermuda greens managers. During winter months bermuda grass greens are painted with a green pigment for color, but through the process studies have found temperatures have been increased in the plant prolonging the growing period and in some regions of the world tricking the plant to not go dormant. The darkened color on the leaf blade absorbs more heat and through test trials have increased the plant’s temperature by almost 10 degrees. Our goal is to increase the fairways temperatures and hopefully the Vamont will hold their leaves longer into the winter season and reducing the thin condition into spring green up. Just over the past 2 days we have actually seen some growth out of these 3 fairways.
Painted Fairway
Our test trials has been applied to fairways #14, #15, and #16. We will reapply the green paint about every 20-30 days until green up and evaluate the conditions to determine if in 2014 we apply this paint to all the fairways.
#16/#15 Painted Fairways
It’s nice to see you trying inovative things! Even if it does not get the results you we all hope for we all appreciate the effort!
Ron Hibbard
Thank you Steffie for the explanation…someone asked me the other day about why those fairways seemed greener and I said perhaps they applied a late season fertilizer…I agree with Ron thank you for the extra creative effort to improve our fairways during the fall and winter season…Is there a plan in the next year or 2 to replace our fairways with grass more conducive to our seasonal temperatures?
Mike
Yeah Mike a proposal has been turned into convert the fairways to 419 bermuda. A time frame has not been established yet.