In between the rain events this month we have been plugging away at our long list of cultural practices. In mid-September we took advantage of a nice sunny day and ran our Sisis Verticutting unit on our tees. Verticutting is also known as dethatching. For compaction relief and thatch reduction, we have gone to solid tining tees in conjunction with deep verticutting on tees as opposed to the traditional hollow tine aeration. in the first picture you can see the amount of material that the Sisis brings up. We follow up with a blowing and finally a healthy topdressing of straight sand to fill the lines. In the third picture you can see the finished product. This process not only reduces thatch, but also provides a firmer and more level teeing surface.
Last fall we utilized a “new to us” method of revitilization for our practice tee. Our contractor TDS, fraize mowed the surface of the tee to remove organic matter as well at to aid in leveling. The tee was then aerified and seeded to a new variety of creeping rye grass. We chose this type of turf grass as research shows rapid recovery and a low growth habit. We were able to get some great growth in the fall, but the tee is still not ready for traffic and full use. The plan is to utilize the mats until growth has filled in some of the voids etc. We will then begin to slowly set up hitting areas on the grass tee. For a while we will alternate between grass and the mats with a 50/50 ratio of use. Once the grass tee is established and is in adequate recovery mode, the practice areas will be back to normal. As always our membership’s patience is appreciated as we try to improve these areas for use.
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