Wednesday was another extremely cold day in Highlands with wind gusts up to 45 mph! The little bit of snow is being blown around to expose the 2" of ice underneath. You can literally ice skate on the ninth fairway. All greens and tees are the same...covered in 2" of solid ice. Fortunately, the ice should melt by next week. If it didn't like many northern climates, we would need to mechanically remove it to avoid any winter kill issues, specifically with the Poa annua. Ice seals the turf off from oxygen and Poa can't live much more than 30 days under ice cover. bentgrass on the other hand is slightly more hardy. It can withstand somewhere around 50-60 days under ice. Thankfully, Highlands has mild winters compared to the North and this is rarely reality. That said, I suppose you could use winter kill to your advantage in removing small patches of Poa annua from relatively new bentgrass greens.
With as much ice is there is on the course, I won't let the guys out there for safety reasons. In the meantime, we will continue to split firewood for the Clubhouse and Hudson House. This is all hardwood removed from the course this winter. As of last week, all of our tree work is completed for the year.
Below, you can see it will be a cold couple days!!
