Greens Aerification

This has been a busy week, starting off hosting the Frontier Collegiate Conference on Monday and Tuesday and then moving into greens aerification on Wednesday and Thursday.

This year with greens aerification we decided to make some changes.  When I first arrived here 4 years ago and sent away soil samples of our greens, they came back with 6.8% organic matter. Optimally you want to maintain your greens around 4% or slightly under.  This excess organic matter led to many problems, soft and spongy greens, shallow root system, disease pressure, and poorer putting conditions.

Core aerification last spring - lots of material

The organic layer held up all the nutrients and water, harboring disease, and led to scalping of mowers, soft conditions, and greens that were not smooth or fast.  We were very aggressive in core aerifying and pulling plugs both spring and fall the last several years.  This led to soil tests that came back at 3.8% organic matter in August of last year.  So this spring we used sold tines.  I always tell people that your type of aerification should be tailored toward your end goal.  Deep tine if you need infiltration or incorporating material deep into the profile, hallow tines if you are trying to remove organic matter, and solid tines if you want to incorporate sand into the upper profile.  Now with our organic matter where we want it, our goal was to put as many holes as we could in the upper 4 inches, incorporate sand, continue to firm up the upper surface, maintain smooth surfaces, and continue with organic matter breakdown.

By not pulling a core, we took a different approach and topdressed the greens first, then followed with the aerifier.  This allowed the vibration of the aerifier to help incorporate the sand into the profile and it really worked well.

Topdressing done (on right) then aerifying - quite the difference on what the aerifier is working in

Only the aerifier has gone over this, and 50% of the sand is already in the holes

Then the brush

Rolling them out smooth

Coco fiber matt to brush them smooth

Followed then by a heavy irrigation cycle, and continued brush, mow, and roll this week on an alternating schedule.  We should have them back in good shape in about a week.