Your CHOA Board recognizes your concern about the lack of watering during the past few days of extreme heat and have been working diligently with the water company to supply the much needed water. In the meantime, homeowners may need to supplement the water for their plantings. We will keep you informed when the system is once again on schedule.
The information from our landscapers below may be of interest to you:
“CHOA Team,
As we all know our state saw record heat this past week. Our water management team has been running as much water as the golf course system will allow. We anticipated temps near 100 degrees but not 117. This extreme heat in addition to a water supply issue has been hard on the turf and plants/trees.
We have finished a complete assessment of the lawns and plants in your association. As you know we have a lot of burned lawns and plants. The lawns will rebound in time especially if mother nature helps with much needed rain. As for the plant damage different plants handle the heat differently.
Conifers. Most conifers are slow growing and only push new needles out in the spring. Unfortunately, the heat wave has burned a lot of these up. However, this does not mean all conifers are dead because of it. There is 3 ways to approach the conifer rehabilitation. #1 Use a rake or a hose to assist in the removal of dead needles. #2 Do selective pruning to the plant and try to keep a natural look to the plant. #3 Replace the plant. This will depend on the HOA opinion on what can be tolerated. And wait until spring of next year to see new growth.
Perennials and grasses Suffered as well. These plants will recover and will be tipped during our regular pruning. You should see a near 100% recovery to these plants.
Rhododendrons are very hardy. Nearly all plants in full sun have burned tops. Our suggestion is to tip prune burned tops at our fall pruning. All rhododendrons will recover. Note: If we prune the dead out of the rhodies to early there is a good chance another extreme heat event could happen in August and September and burn them again. This will have to be considered.
Maples and azaleas were also burned. Most all these plants and trees will recover in time. We suggest a light tip pruning to remove burned foliage and hope for the best.
All other plants with burn damage should be tip pruned.
Be sure to remind the homeowners that there is an agreed amount of pruning a year agreed under the contract. And to be patient while we further discuss our options of how to deal with the unprecedented extreme heat event.
We are very sad to see the damage your plants experienced and will work together for the most cost-effective solution to move forward on cleaning these burned plants and trees up. Most of the damage would be pruned during regular pruning cycle, but not sure the association or homeowners want to wait or if this were something you would like us to assemble an extra pruning crew and handle as an extra like we did for the winter storm damage. I look forward to your feedback on how you would like us to proceed.
Lastly, please know we are working tirelessly to correct the water issue. A meeting is scheduled with the Golf Course and hopefully a solution will be worked out.
Ty Bruenderman
Garron Grounds Management, Inc.
General Manager”
Thank you for your patience.
I appreciate the explanation and suggestions, but I wish that we would have warming that the planned watering might not be sufficient, considering the weather forecasters were upping their predictions from mid-week on.
Eric,
Unfortunately, our Website was in transition that week as we migrated over to a new server/domain so we could not get a Post out.
I agree it would have been nice to know there were issues with the water…we all could have supplemented with hand watering and maybe saved some damage. I hope the communication on the solution will be kept more current.
At this point I would leave them alone. Cutting the azaleas and Rhodies now would cut off next years blooms
wait until after next years blooms?