Greens Aerification

Over the last 2 days, we aerified all of our greens. The next step is to top-dress them heavily with sand. This process causes a little disruption to golfers but it is essential and highly beneficial to the greens. The main benefit is it relieves soil compaction, over the course of the year the greens get so much traffic from golfers walking on them and us mowing them that the soil gets compacted. Roots need oxygen so this is not good for them. In good soil, roots get oxygen from tiny pockets of air trapped between soil and sand particles. This process helps us achieve that in our greens. We chose to use a small side eject tine which creates only a small hole in comparison to typical 3/4 inch hollow tines.

Verti Draining Fairways

This week we have started Verti draining our fairways. This will greatly benefit the course. The main benefit of using this machine is improved drainage. The tines on this machine are set to penetrate the surface to a depth of 9 inches, so you can imagine how this will help with compaction. It will also help get air down to the roots of the turf. The small holes left in the fairway as a result shouldn't last longer than a week.