On Monday we completed our heavy topdressing and deep tine aerification. All of our greens were brushed leaving little sand on the surface and the majority in the 8" deep holes. To ensure that we got as much sand as possible into the profile as well as into the turf canopy, we topdressed all greens again this morning at a half rate (compared to yesterday). The greens will obviously be playing rather "sandy" for a bit now. With the forecasted rain events in the next few days the sand will work its way down and we will be looking at green grass again soon. Just as a foot note, over this day and a half process we put down approx. 40 tons of topdressing sand on just under 3 acres of greens. This process will not only encourage deep rooting next season, but will also help to keep melting ice and snow away from the turf canopy (by acting as drains) during those winter freeze/thaw cycles that can be so dangerous to putting greens. As with most of our cultural practices this also helps us achieve our goal of fast and firm putting surfaces for the future. I will be posting some pictures of the process with description in the next few days.
A week has passed since our annual spring greens aeration. We have had a mixed bag of weather, hot, dry, cold, wet and even frost! These conditions make it challenging to aid in healing, but with the more recent consistent warm temperatures we are seeing solid recovery. We were fortunate to have decent weather to complete the process on time, allowing us to fill all the holes created by the 1/2” hollow tines. As there are some minor depressions within some of the holes we will be beginning our bi-weekly topdressing program early next week. Our team is mowing and rolling our greens daily, while slowly lowering our height of cut to our summer norm. We all know that spring cultural practices are not popular among golfers, but these all important tasks are the building blocks for high performance greens conditions throughout the heart of the golf season. Check out this video produced by the USGA on Aerations effect on putting...
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