Inner Seeding Fairways

Today we are inner seeding our fairways at HCC with PennTrio creeping bentgrass. Inner seeding is a way to get more bentgrass established into our fairways. HCC never had "fairways" until the late 1970's. Prior to that, all turf except greens was mowed at one height. The turf was comprised of a variety of species. When fairways were established by Superintendent, Steve Zarnick, the height of cut was simply lowered and no conversion to any one grass was done. Routine inner seeding through the years helped the fairways transition to predominately bentgrass. However, there are a lot of fairways that contain Kentucky Bluegrass, Perennial Ryegrass, rough bluegrass and of course, Poa annua. Our desired species in fairways is obviously, creeping bentgrass. A pure stand of bent is much harder to achieve at HCC because of this history. Compare this to a new golf course like Mountaintop or others that were seeded or sodded with bentgrass from the beginning. Regardless, a lot of headway has been made over the years and we continue to improve turf quality in all areas of the golf course.