Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Aerification of Fine Turf Areas to Finish Today

This week, we completed the aerification of tees, approaches and fairways.  Last week, we aerified greens on Monday and then finished topdressing them on Tuesday.  The recovery has gone quite well considering we did a conventional 1/2" aerification followed by a deep tine and then a dryject.  There was a lot of sand on the greens when all was said and done and the holes all were completely filled.  Right now, the greens are about 80% healed and yesterday was the first time we used our normal greens mowers to mow.  We have been using old mowers to pick sand for the past 4 days.  I suspect the greens should be 100% healed by the weekend.
The biggest problem dealing with aerification is the sand topdressing.  Working it in the holes is labor intensive as we did a single brush followed by pack blowers to work sand around the greens.  Once this is done, it takes several mowings to remove excess sand and mowing in the mornings can become very messy.  We try to mow in the afternoons so the sand is dry and does not make a mess but this past weekend was a mess with the heavy dew and sand accumulation on rollers etc..  We are just about past this now as our new hand mowers went out yesterday to do the first mowing of grass and this will continue moving forward.
Our fairway topdressing will take place following the club championship when we verticut all the fairways.  We wait to do this as it is a stressful practice and the temperatures should be much cooler by then.

No comments:

Post a Comment