Get The Buck Out of Here!

 

Our new Leyland Cypress screening hedge by 13 tees has been under attack by bucks trying to rub their antlers on them.  Several have broken branches and are starting to look sparse.  We installed 200 feet of wire fencing around the hedge to deter them from doing any further damage.  Lets hope it works!

Deep Tine on Fairways

 

Normally this practice is done often on greens and on a few of our wetter fairways, but we are trying to get all the fairways deep tined to a depth of 4-8" depending on soil.  If we can make it through this application without much damage to our turf or the machines, we will try and do this twice per season to help with drainage.  Over time the more we do it, the deeper we can start to go.

Yikes

 

The past 3 weekends, we have seen substantial rainfall, ranging from 1.5-3" each event.  Yesterday was the conclusion of the worst one, with 3+" of rain with heavy wind gusts.  What we are left with is washed out bunkers, washed out cart paths and debris that will take a while to clean up with a skeleton crew.  We had just finished temporarily fixing bunkers about 10 days ago and we will be back at it again so they are somewhat playable for winter play.   No rest for the weary.

Investment Paid Off

 

We purchased the Sandfiller above right after Covid to help save on labor.  You can see the machine verticuts, drops sand in the slit and cleans up the thatch in one pass.  As you can see it is basically a 3 man operation with 1 operator and 2 guys filling the hopper with sand.

This is 10 green and back when we aerated greens, we were leery to verticut this green before aeration in fear that with lack of roots we would get damage and not be able to pull cores after.  Once we aerated we saw no damage so we decided to put our Graden out today to do this one green instead of hooking up the Sandfiller.

The results were very good but it required 5 men about 2.5 hours to verticut, fill the hopper and blow off the green after.  Compare that to the Sandfiller, 3 men and about 30 minutes to do a green, and a much cleaner product.

Successful Aeration

 

Greens aeration is in the books and it was quite successful.  We started by using the sandfiller verticut machine and then went in with 1/2" tines and pulled cores.  Cores were dragged around to use current sand profile to backfill holes and cores were shoveled off and spread on our practice greens, 11th green and alternate 16 green.  Greens are rolling smooth the day after.  One caveat is we will be topdressing again in early December and going in with a 3/4" deep tine to help in winter drainage.  This will be the final cultural practice in 2023.

Fairway Topdressing

 

Now that fairway aeration and verticutting is completed we will be burying the fairways in sand.  Once we drag the sand once to fill in aeration holes, we will leave the remnants for the fall and winter months ahead.  By spring, the sand will work in nicely and we will do it all over again.

Matting Starting to Blend In

 You can see after only a short period of time that the grass is beginning to grow through the mat on #6.  The same is happening on 10.  By next spring once grass really starts to grow, the mat will almost be invisible and the wear and tear spots should be gone.