End Of The Growing Season

The growing season in Grand Forks came to an abrupt end on Wednesday morning when we bottomed out at 26 degrees.  While we have had a few frosts in the previous weeks, all of those came with temperatures above the freezing point (we have actually seen frost occur on the turf with temperatures as high as 41 degrees.)

With a low of 26 on both Wednesday and Thursday, the turf is officially done growing for the season.  Combined with the short day lengths and cooler soil temperatures, the grass plants are now well into their descent into dormancy in preparation for the long winter ahead.  We try our best to help the turf in that process by raising the mowing height and reducing the mowing frequency this time of year.  Doing this allows the plant to produce more leaf surface which in turn increases its photosynthesis capacity, which is much more important this time of year with the shorter days and lower sun angles (less sunlight).  Now that the turf is headed into dormancy, almost all of the carbohydrates it produces through photosynthesis will be directed straight to the roots in order to be used as food during the winter.  At this point in the fall, we will see almost no top growth of the grass, which means we essentially are done mowing.

In the turf management business, we are the only "farmers" crazy enough to grow a perennial crop that lives through a North Dakota winter (with the exception of a small amount of winter wheat).  Everyone else gets to harvest their crop in the fall and plant it again in the spring, but we don't have that luxury with turf.

A very white and frozen start to the day on Wednesday morning.  The staff
wasn't able to start doing anything on the course until almost 10:00am.

A close up of a very heavy frost on one of our bentgrass tees

The fairways are now being mowed only once a week.  We realistically
only have 3 or 4 mowings left to do this season on the fairways.

One last interesting characteristic of the golf course this time of year are all the different color patterns on the greens.  The original Penncross bentgrass that makes up our greens is notorious for genetically segregating out into a bunch of different clones of its self.  These different genetic varieties all react differently to cold weather and soil temperatures, creating some interesting colors and patterns on the greens.

No need to worry here, this interesting color scheme is completely
natural and normal, and actually kind of cool.