These photos were taken 3 days apart, after having 3 nights of 50*F temperatures following the 2-week cold snap we experienced. While light can account for some of the difference, each photo was taken at the same time each morning with the same camera settings. You can see a big difference in green color from the beginning of the week to today. Last night, I posted an article from the USGA on spring weather. In the article it mentioned:
"Unfortunately, the limiting factor in healing is not fertilizer or water, it is simply warmer temperatures. These will come soon enough so we just need to be patient. Additional fertilizer now will not help to heal lingering aeration holes but it will cause an unnecessary flush of growth when temperatures do finally increase."
This is very true. Many Superintendents who haven't learned this, will do so the hard way and end up paying for it all season with excess growth. This causing us losing the ability to control green speed and other putting green measurements. When we look at turf day in and day out, it seems like growth is so slow and there isn't a change from day to day. I learned when I want to see progress, to photograph an area in question and then photograph the area again a few days later. When I start documenting playing surfaces like this, the amount of improvement that's occurring is actually quite shocking. It's easy to feel like nothing is happening when we look at the golf course on a day to day basis. When we step back and look at from it week to week basis by way of photos, it becomes clear there is a lot happening and each day it gets incrementally better every day.
