Columnist Peter Benton: Overseeding good for the long term

Peter Benton

Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001 | 9:49 a.m.

Peter Benton's golf column appears Wednesday.

It is that time of year again as many local courses are closed because of overseeding.

Please take heart, fellow golfers. The inconvenience will be for just a couple of weeks and before you know it, the layouts being worked upon will be better than ever and set for our fall and winter seasons.

Aerification, one of the many preventative maintenance programs that are so necessary to the health of golf courses, invariably takes place in late summer approximately six weeks before overseeding begins.

Three very important objectives are achieved: Soil compaction is relieved, thatch is reduced and/or prevented and the soil mixture around the highest part of the roots improves. If this process is not attended to, particularly on the greens, the roots decline and the turf becomes increasingly weaker and thus is susceptible to disease.

Because Bermuda grass becomes dormant with the arrival of cooler weather, overseeding with rye (which thrives in colder conditions) must be completed by late October as that is when Las Vegas usually experiences its first frost of the year.

Here in town, 90 percent of our layouts begin overseeding immediately following Labor Day because it is then that the days, and especially the evenings, begin cooling down.

In the new year, once the soil temperature reaches a consistent 55 degrees the Bermuda grass begins to grow back (this transition period happens through April, May and June) when the rye is basically choked out, as Bermuda is a far more aggressive grass.

Thus the cycle has been completed.