Fairway aerification

We completed fairway aerification today, at least what we could get at.  A few fairways were still too wet from the recent rains, so we passed them up for now.

We had a slight frost delay, finally getting out around 9.

 

During the next few days we will be cleaning up the mess we just made, before long, you won't know we aerified. 

Greens aerification completed

We completed greens aerification yesterday, applying sand and aerating with 3/4" solid tines.  Today we focused on filling in the remaining open holes and continued the process of spreading the sand around and smoothing the greens back out through rolling. 

 

As you saw in my last post, quality roots are a direct result of proper soil structure through aerification.  The mess we are making now is going to help us produce excellent conditions for the next 7 months. 

 

Pins will be back in the greens tomorrow; over the next few days will continue working in the sand and rolling the greens.  Reminder - this upcoming Monday we will be aerifying fairways. 

Greens aerification completed

Yesterday we aerified all the greens, the unofficial end to another great season.  When we aerify we use ample sand to fill in all the holes, this sand will be present for quite some time - until the grass grows through the sand.  Some years this may be 10 days, other years the sand is there until next spring.

Monday, we started the day off early be applying a heavy coat of sand to the greens while it was still dark.  At first light, we double aerified the greens - once with a 'deep tine' machine making holes 3/4" round by 10" deep, and once with our machine, going 4" deep.

After the sand is dry, we drag the greens, apply more sand and continued to drag the sand around, filling in the holes.

We are now starting to smooth the greens by rolling. 

 

Overall, this aerification went great, the greens will be in good shape heading into winter and we are looking forward to another great season in 2017. 

As we inch closer to winter we are starting to make preparations for the end of the season.  All the annual flowers have been pulled, next on our list is chopping down all the perennials.  Today we removed all the tee markers from the course allowing us to be more efficient with our limited labor this time of year.  Feel free to use any part of the tee as you play for the remainder of the year. 

Tee aerification

We picked off another project on our to-do list, aerifying tees today.

After plugs were pulled from the tees, we drug the soil back into the tee and picked up all the remaining thatch. 

 

Aerifying reduces compaction, removes thatch, increases air flow, aids in drainage and promotes root growth - all essential for a healthy tee. 

Aerification update

The fairways were aerified today, but due to the wet conditions, we could not clean up all the cores.  As we dry out tomorrow, we will be able to clean off the fairways.  The course will be open tomorrow for walkers only.  If you decide to come out please be prepared for muddy conditions. 

Fairway aerification

Due to the cold temps forecasted for next Monday, we will be aerifying fairways tomorrow and into Tuesday.  Rain is forecasted for tonight, therefore it may be too wet to pulverize all the plugs tomorrow and will have to wait until Tuesday.  I will try to keep you updated on our progress and thank you for your patience. 

Greens aerifcation

We were scheduled to Aerify greens on March 28 - I decided to move that up a bit.  While you may not have been able to golf on this gorgeous day, we used this great weather to be productive getting the course ready for the season.

 

 

Aerification is important to the overall health and playability of the greens.  No one likes to play while greens are slow and bumpy, but it's a necessary process.  The great news is now that we have this out of the way, you get to play on greens from course opening until October 24 with no more greens aerification.  As of now, we are scheduled to aerify fairways on April 4.

 

Opening April 1st

Aerification is going smoothly and the weather is improving, the golf course will be open for play starting April 1st.  We will be opening 4 days sooner than we did last year, just in time for Easter weekend. 

Please take note - we are aerifying greens and fairways today, those projects will be completed by Wednesday, but the scars will remain for a couple weeks.  As the weather continues to improve, the grass will soon fill in, and be back to normal very soon.  With this minor inconvenience out of the way, the membership will have uninterrupted golf until we aerify again, which will be October.

 

We accomplished a lot today, and will continue until dark.  The clean-up will start back up again tomorrow morning. 

We started off early this morning, mowing greens and fairways for the first time of the season.

Taking the winter brown off, revealing the green underneath.

After a layer of topdressing, we punched 3/4" holes down to 4"

We hire out the fairway portion of the aerification, they use 4 machines to accomplish the job in one day.

After we drag the fairways, the contractor will pulverize the cores to break them apart into small pieces.  We then come in behind, dragging the fairway one more time, blowing it off, verticutting it, blowing it off again, then vacuuming up the debris.  After that we focus on cleaning off the irrigation heads and cleaning up any remaining mud in the rough and on the paths.

 

We couldn't have asked for a better day to aerify - sunny and windy.

 

Greens aerification

Monday was the day for our planned fall greens aerification and what a perfect day we had.  Usually when we get those 75 degree fall days, the golfers want the course to themselves, but there are certain days where we would like to have those days as well to get things done, and we hit it just right on Monday.  All the greens were aerified, 60 tons of sand were applied and worked into the holes, the greens were rolled to start the smoothing process, all 25 acres of fairways were mowed and we had two guys mulching leaves all day - a very productive day for sure.

Because we skipped the typical late-August aerification this year, we double aerified the greens.

One set was a deep-tine aerifier, making a 3/4" hole about 10" deep.

The other set was done by our own walk-behind machine, making 3/4" holes about 5" deep, covering about 10% of our surface area.  Sand was applied prior to making the holes, allowing the tines to push the sand down.  Once the sand was dry, the surface was dragged to move the remaining sand into all the holes.

Tee aerification

Today was an excellent day to squeeze in tee aerification.  We typically don't schedule this in advance because we can knock it out on a Monday and the course is still playable while we are performing the work.

All the tees were done today - mowed, pulled cores, dragged, cleaned off, verticut and blown clean.

Soil test results

One big change we are implementing this year is no August aerification on the greens.  The last few years we have typically aerifyed greens in late March, mid August and late October.  This year I am combining the August and October aerifications into one late October greens plugging.  We are going to poke twice as many holes as we normally do in October to compensate for the loss of aerification in August, in doing this we will be providing more time of uninterrupted golf for our members during the key months of golfing weather.

I am in no way diminishing the importance of aerification, our greens would not hold up without it.  Due to the continued improvement in our soil test results, we can make this slight change, or at least try it for a few years.  We take yearly soil samples and get data for nutrient levels and fertilizer recommendations.  We also get data on pore space, infiltration rates, organic matter content and sand particle size distribution.  We track trends and apply practices to meet the needs of the greens and move the numbers in the right direction. 

Last fall I spoke with our soil consultant about implementing this change in aerification schedule.  He stated that with our conditions and recent data, this could be a viable option.  In the least, it won't hurt to try - we can always move back to the past schedule if needed to improve greens conditions.

A few weeks ago, Brian Mavis our soil consultant was here for his annual visit.  We took multiple soil samples and performed a few tests.

The results just came back yesterday, the data continues to improve (I won't bore you with all the data, I'll save that for the Grounds Committee).  Because of this, we are very comfortable implementing the change in aerifiaction schedule this year.

One item of note on our test results were higher numbers of medium size sand particles.  This has caused us to test our topdressing sand to insure it continues to meet our standards.  If the sand has changed compared to what data we currently have, a new sand will be found.  Here is a picture of our OSU intern, Evan Riggs taking a sample from our topdressing pile.  To get a representative sample we need sand not only from the outside of the pile, but also the inside - hence using a tube.  We take samples in this manner on the top, middle and bottom of the pile in 5-6 different sides of the pile.

The sand is then brought to a clean surface, mixed and divided until we get an adequate sized pile to send in. 

Roots

While changing cups this morning, I noticed something I really enjoyed seeing - ROOTS! 

You will notice a clump of roots coming out of the plug - coming through an aerification hole.

One lone root coming through the entire plug profile, about 8".  There is only one way this happens - deep tine aerification.

 

I know it may not look like much, but 4-5" poa roots is a good thing.  Especially when mowed at an 1/8 of an inch.

 

Click on this picture to get a good view of all those white roots coming out of the bottom.  All of these roots I saw were the direct result of aerification, that is why the process is so important to the health of our turf.  Aerification decreases compaction, increases oxygen levels and promotes water movement through the profile - all very important to roots.  Without aerification rooting would decline and shallow out.  We need long and healthy (white) roots this time of year to get us through those tuff summers.  During the summer, roots will die back and shallow out due to plant stress.  The longer and more roots we have now, the better the summer will be for us.

 

 

Taking advantage of the great weather this week

Sorry for the lack of posting the few days, we have been quite busy.  The weather has been wonderful.  Don't feel too bad that the course was still closed on these warm and sunny days, we were getting a lot accomplished out on the course.

We were scheduled to aerify greens this past Monday and aerify fairways on April 7.  We were able to aerify both this past Monday.  The fairway aerification is contracted out and the contractor was looking for a dry course to work on, so we moved the process up a week and got it done.  The Grounds staff has been putting in 14 hour days to get it all done before the rain hit.  We finished up late last night, now the rain is helping us clean things up.

Monday morning we started by pulling plugs on the fairways and adding sand to the greens.

The greens were then solid tined with 3/4" tines about 4" deep.

Once the sand is dry, we can then drag it into the open holes

Later in the day, we took out our new greens roller and started rolling the green.

Wayne made sure all the irrigation heads on the fairways and greens were marked.  One busted head by an aerifier can mean hours of labor in repairs and a couple hundred dollars in parts.

We had three machines going on the fairways, it's a quick process with the right equipment.

The cores were then turned over with a drag mat to aid in drying.

Once dry we then pulverize the plugs letting the soil fall back into the ground.  This leaves only thatch left behind to be blown off the fairway.

We also verticut the fairways to break up any left over pieces of dirt.

The fairways are then blown off and the debris is vacuumed up.  By last night the fairways were very clean.  I'm glad this project is over for the membership.  Withing a few weeks, all the holes will be filled in and we will have one long season uninterrupted by further aerification.  Aeriying is a necessity on the golf course to provide the healthy tuf that is needed to withstand the stresses of the summer.  Although it is a yearly occurance, there is never a good time to get this done in the golfers mind.  Having this done before we even opened will make this year more enjoyable.

 

Any down time we had in the aerification process we spent on picking up sticks.

Today with the rain it gave us chance to work on some equipment cleaning.

Along with some housecleaning.

 

The Grounds staff did a great job this week, putting in a lot of hours making sure the aerification process was as clean as possible so that when we open, you will hardly notice.

Greens deep tine

Yesterday we aerified the greens with a deep tine machine - this machine made holes 3/4" wide and 9" deep into the greens.  This process will give us better drainage, better rooting and firmer greens in the long run.

 

 

We started the day by blowing all the debris off the greens.

 

We then mowed.

 

 

All the sprinklers were flagged, a sprinkler hit by an aerifier is a $200 fix.

 

Sand was added prior to aerifying.

 

Deep tine machine making 9" deep holes.

 

Once the sand has dried, we can drag it into the open holes creating a drainage channel.

 

Lastly the greens were rolled smooth.

 

We will be adding more sand to the greens today and continue rolling the greens throughout the week.

 

Greens and ball marks

It has been 9 days since aerification and the greens have filled in nicely.  To aid in getting the greens back in shape as soon as possible we added extra fertilizer and raised the mowing height.  Now that the greens have filled in, we will begin lowering the mowing heights to get speeds back to normal.  The goal is to have pristine greens for the Championship next weekend.  While speeds may be slow during the recovery, they are recovering quicker and will allow for better greens sooner.

Below is a picture of the proper way to fix a ball mark (assuming you fix yours, please do).

That last paragraph is key, the sooner you fix a ball mark the better. 

 

Aerification update

The weather the past few days has hampered our progress on getting the greens back to normal.  All of the sand has been applied to the greens, but we have not been able to mow them yet because the sand has not had a chance to dry properly.  Yesterday we had rain and today we had a slight mist all morning.  When the sand is wet, we can't drag, roll or mow the greens - the sand sticks to everything and makes a mess.  We are waiting patiently for the sun to come out so that we can work on the greens, once that happens we will be rolling them smooth and start mowing them down.

Greens aerification

Today was aerification day - all the greens have been aerified and we have begun the process of filling the holes with sand.  We will be applying more sand tomorrow and Thursday until all the holes are completely filled.

Aerification will help grow longer roots, decrease compaction, increase oxygen levels in the soil and allow for better drainage.  Ultimately producing smoother, faster and healthier greens in the long run.

We also spent the day verticutting the fairways.  With the cooler temps lately, we took the opportunity to thin out the fairways.  Holes 13-18 will be finished tomorrow.

 

The grass to the left is after a pass with the verticutting unit, it stands up the turf allowing us to cut off the long runners, producing a tighter cut.