This is awesome. Fellow WRXer here, going to put in a green this fall, I'll be using this as guidance! What height was your first mow at? I'm not sure how low I'll be able to take the bent given it's grown on native soil, but I bet I can get it to 0.150. Hoping to get speeds of around 10 after double cut and double roll. Have you enjoyed doing it so far?

 

My first mow ended up being at 5/8" and I moved it down to 1/2" about a week later. July was a struggle with heat, lack of rain, etc. so I left it at 1/2 for a while to let it fill back in. Currently I am at 1/4" and my target will be 5/32". The floating head on the new Jacobsen mower should reduce scalping but I can already tell that I will require quite a bit of top dressing to level things out. 0.150 seems like a good goal and from the advice my local Superintendent gave me, the lower you cut it, the more it costs you.

Oh, and yes, I have really enjoyed doing it so far but tend to get a bit OCD about things. It has been a lovely distraction. So far the only things I would have done differently would be to have a better preventative fungicide / pesticide plan. I figure I lost a couple of weeks in terms of getting it fit for play due to the disease stress in July and the bout of cutworm.

Are you starting from scratch and seeding, or do you already have bentgrass established?

 

@DbShep Im starting from scratch, just did my first RoundUp spray last week. It's going to be about 2000 sqft. Hoping to seed around September 15th. Ideally I will avoid the hot weather this way and allow it to grow and develop and avoid disease. I'm going to get propiconazole and azoxystrobin for my preventative program. I've got all the foliar nutrients already, I'll probably be spraying once a week during the growing season.

 

@DbShep Im starting from scratch, just did my first RoundUp spray last week. It's going to be about 2000 sqft. Hoping to seed around September 15th. Ideally I will avoid the hot weather this way and allow it to grow and develop and avoid disease. I'm going to get propiconazole and azoxystrobin for my preventative program. I've got all the foliar nutrients already, I'll probably be spraying once a week during the growing season.

Nice! I'm a little over 1200 sq ft and wish I had made it a bit bigger. Are you going to amend the soil with any sand? I found it really helped with the sub-leveling to smooth everything out. Hand raking with a 3' rake was not my favourite part though. Against some urging from folks on Golfwrx, I tilled native soil into my sand. My superintendent friends thought this would provide some organic matter to hopefully aid in water retention. So far this has worked well.

When I first ran into issues, I think I had a bit of pythium blight from damping off and I tackled that with azoxystrobin. It is very easy to make the mistake of overwatering once the seed has germinated and begins to establish.

As preventative, I believe azoxystrobin is good for 28 days after application.

I was very excited to be given the Jacobsen mower as it will allow me to build a fringe and approach to effectively make my green bigger to hit into, (I can set my Toro 1000 up for the fringe cut). I can play from various positions on my lawn from 50-60 yards and in.

 

Looking forward to this topic, i'm A bit over one year into my own putting green odyssey. I'm a bit smaller, 20 x 30 paces on 1 acre.

 

from the pics it looks like you hired golf turf pros . very nice design and execution

 

Thanks! I have a couple of friends who are superintendents locally and have been able to pick their brains for ideas. Apart from the mowers, I had all of the equipment already to build everything and the Covid break gave me lots of time.

 

Subscribed!

We have similar properties and situations. I'm on the cusp of suburbia, edge of a few hundred acre fields that are slowly being developed. I'm friends with the local super too - I drop off my equipment with his to get serviced, and we trade lots of ideas.

I used to manage 7K, which was a cakewalk compared to 1.4 acres I have now. He really opened my eyes up to what's important and what's not in terms of mower maintenance, but also the mentality behind managing acres instead of K.

My biggest pain (sometimes) is rust in the fall. When the farmers harvest the corn or soybeans, it kicks up that rust in the air - you can literally see the cloud - and I have to apply a rust preventative as the corn rust gets all stirred up, make sure I wash it off etc. I also get lots of voles along the creekline or by the house, lots of mice.

But the plus side is I'm pretty close to farm suppliers, and since I'm effectively a sod farm, that helps a lot.

 

The difficulty I am having is that I live in Ontario Canada and pesticide / herbicides are banned for cosmetic treatments of lawns. I'm trying to balance out biological treatments and natural practices. I do have some farm friends who are able to get me small quantities of fungicide when needed but I have to be careful with that. The benefit is that I live in the countryside and don't really have close neighbour's.

 

This is so cool. Nice work on the green, it looks immaculate.

 

Back on watering duty, (also keeping myself hydrated).



This is my first try with bentgrass and HOC is 0.25" currently. I had some cutworm and between the damage they caused and various weeds I have handpicked, I have several small spots that still need to fill in. I think I have the cutworm under control now, so would you guys overseed these areas or just wait for them to grow in. I notice worm castings in all of these areas each morning as well and they squish down into ugly spots when my front roller hits them.

 

You sure know how to make an entrance!

Welcome to TLF. There are threads specific to Canadians and Ontarians under "Hometown Discussions" dealing with pesticide bans and sympathetic vendors who ship from south of the border.

 

So, I sprayed Malathion last week in hopes it would help my cutworm problem. I thought it had because I found dead caterpillars on the green a couple mornings in a row. Last night while I was watering at dusk, I noticed more emerging to the surface. I gave it a dose of Malathion again, (it is all I have access to at the moment given restrictions in Ontario), and went out about an hour later to see the extent of the problem. I picked a bunch of caterpillars off of the green last night and about 20 or so more that were dead / dying on the surface this morning. I guess this will be my life for the next few nights....

Anyone have any other tips that may help rid me of this problem? If it hadn't been for the damage these hungry pricks cause, everything would be filled in and I'd be at playing height by now.

 

Whew that sucks. Can you put down a general insecticide or is that unavailable?

 

...Anyone have any other tips that may help rid me of this problem?

Beneficial NEMATODES!!!!!!!!

See cutworms in menu on left side of page .... https://www.arbico-organics.com/category/beneficial-nematodes

My own success story, here: https://thelawnforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=15013&p=242893&hilit=Wire+worm#p242893

 

Whew that sucks. Can you put down a general insecticide or is that unavailable?

Unfortunately not. Even with Malathion I am spryaing for off label pests. It's broad spectrum though so should work. I'm watering right now and scouted for cutworm first. Tonight I only picked off 2 in my 1300 sq ft. The lesson is that the spray works better as a contact spray than a residual. I'll keep this routine up for the next few nights but considering I picked about 50 cutworms off last night and this morning, I'll call this treatment a success.

 

Sounds like its working! Well done making do!

I've had pill bug problems before on renovations. Mostly when things are too damp and rotten. I dont bother treating them, just reseed and adjust water.

The only pesticide I always apply is grub preventive. We get a lot of damage if we dont apply it, mowing so close. One year i only applied it in previous problem areas and the non treated areas took a hit. I blame the farm fields, creeks, large and wet, open yards for it. The farmers dont spray at all, which is good, just makes for a giant bug magnet.

Even so i still get some insect damage spots on this much area, that i usially start off thinking are fungal problems.

Is it worth an hour of time and $70 to treat the whole yard for insects? Or let them do their thing and find some balance? I let em go. They are probably doing a lot of good for my other plants.

 

Sounds like its working! Well done making do!

I've had pill bug problems before on renovations. Mostly when things are too damp and rotten. I dont bother treating them, just reseed and adjust water.

The only pesticide I always apply is grub preventive. We get a lot of damage if we dont apply it, mowing so close. One year i only applied it in previous problem areas and the non treated areas took a hit. I blame the farm fields, creeks, large and wet, open yards for it. The farmers dont spray at all, which is good, just makes for a giant bug magnet.

Even so i still get some insect damage spots on this much area, that i usially start off thinking are fungal problems.

Is it worth an hour of time and $70 to treat the whole yard for insects? Or let them do their thing and find some balance? I let em go. They are probably doing a lot of good for my other plants.

@HoosierLawnGnome We have a large vegetable garden, chickens, cats and dogs, and horses, so I am wary of spraying large areas and limit it to a manageable area around the area my green is in. The rest of the yard is too big for me to get water to, so it is basically natural and left to itself. The golf green will need to be treated differently for sure and I'll need to find the right balance to handle it. The farm around our property is treated with fungicide on a regular basis and glyphosate when there are beans there, (I'm a bit worried about spray drift but so far my normal yard hasn't been affected). I'll continue my malathion routine and nightly scouting for now in hopes that I have the cutworm beat.

 

Cheers! Thursday afternoon is my big lawn day. Tge lawn is cut and swept and the golf green is cut. Today I tge secondary cut of fringe and fairway approach with my rotary mower. This will slowly be lowered and top dressed until I can cut it somewhere around 1/2" or 3/4" with my Toro 1000. Later tonight I'll head out in the dark and scout for more cutworms.

 

Watering in some fertilizer tonight and hoping it speeds the recovery of the cutworm damage. I also flipped the front brush down on my Jacobsen Eclipse 2 today to help break up ant hills and worm castings. It laid some nice stripes.

 

Looking sweeeeet!

Whatcha using for fertilizer?

I put down some agricultural grade fertilizer the other day. Not a big deal now while it's growing in, but no way will it work when it is mature.

 

Looking sweeeeet!

Whatcha using for fertilizer?

I put down some agricultural grade fertilizer the other day. Not a big deal now while it's growing in, but no way will it work when it is mature.

For now I have Urea, a 16-16-16 farm fertilizer, and a Scott's brand lawn food (33-0-3). The fertilizer granules are bordering on too big now that the green is cut at 1/4" so next year I will chat with my superintendent to see if he can order me a few bags of the stuff they use. The Urea I melt down in hot water and apply with my pump sprayer.

 

These cutworms are still a pain. I scouted again last night and picked off a few so decided to spray some more Malathion, (all we can get up here in Canada). Between last night and this morning I picked off another 20 or so. I'll continue with this routine until the numbers are down. I'm not finding any that are in their beginning growth stages, which is a good thing and the ones I am finding can't be far away from the moth stage. I think I'm through the worst of it, but it's frustrating as everything was looking great and now I have a mess of holes where they have eaten the grass off.

 

That is incredible! Looks like heaven.

So I guess you know there's no excuse for three-putting anymore...

 

Busy afternoon on the grounds crew. I cut the green and approach, then took a break to watch some golf on TV. Next I made a seed shaker out of a mason jar to help me spread seed into the areas damaged by cutworm a little easier. After that, I gave a light top dress in those areas with peat moss and worked it in with the back of my bunker rake before enjoying a nice Juicy IPA and watering things in.