Aerifying and Fertilizing Tees

Recently we have aerified and fertilized a few of our tees to help give them a boost as they really start growing.  Above is the very small blue tee on the par 3 6th.  This tee is way to small for the amount of play it takes, and struggles every year.  We did the same process on 3 blue, 7 blue, 11 white, and 16 blue.  There are a few others that we will have to patch with new sod next week.

Greens All Healed Up From Aerification

Greens aerification was completed last Tuesday and they are about 90% healed up after 10 days.  We topdressed with sand on Wednesday to fill in areas where sand had settled down into the holes.  After rolling them again Thursday and then mowing them today, they seem to be almost back to normal.  We are ready now to lower our height of cut just a little bit to get back to where we normally are.  My guess is in the next few days they will be rolling as good as pre-aerification.  

We will also be allowing carts back into the fairways on Saturday, April 10.  After a mild winter with no extended snow cover, our zoysia looks like it has come out pretty well.  I know it is frustrating to stay on the path for the winter, but we will now reap the rewards of the great fairways we are lucky to have at Swope.

Fairway Aerification

    

        

Our annual fairway aerification is underway at Swope.  As with any aerification, we are looking to relieve compaction and help with water infiltration.  We just started last week and only have four fairways to go. The next time you play golf, see if you can tell which ones we have done.  While the pictures may look like we are tearing them up, we actually get them back to pretty close to normal after dragging plugs and mowing them.

Aerification Is Complete!

Aerification is all complete, and greens are well on their way to being healed up. The last couple days of rain have really helped beat the sand down into the holes. We have now rolled greens three times since Monday, and plan on mowing tomorrow. I played nine holes on Tuesday and was pleasantly surprised at how smooth they actually were. There were still a few bumps here and there but not to bad for being one day out from completion.
This year we tried a different approach by topdressing before we aerified.  We did this to eliminate the ruts we get in the green from the heavy topdresser.  Our approach worked great, and I think we'll be able to smooth them out much quicker.

Josh running the aerifier on 1 green.

Green with topdressing on the left waiting to be aerified and the aerified portion on the right.

The final product.

Fairway Aerification and Native Mowing

July has been a busy month trying to keep the golf course irrigated and the greens healthy.  So far, we have done fairly well considering the rain gauge for the month.  July is a time we also are able to complete a few other tasks as the mowing of the rough and our green and tee banks slows down.  Below are a couple of pictures of our fairway aerification.  This is done during the summer months on zoysia grass when it is growing at its peak.  The fairways are aerified, dragged with a mat to break up cores, and then mowed.  After the process, the holes are barely noticeable.  We only complete about 2-3 fairways a day because of time restrictions.  We will hopefully be done by late next week.



Tractor pulling the aerifier.

Close up of the plugs.

July is also a time for us to mow down our native grasses and treat for weeds.  We do this now after the seeds have begun to lay over.  This also allows us to spray over the top with our spray rig to remove unwanted plants.

Picture from left of #12 before mowing.  Notice all of the weeds that have popped up.

After mowing with a brush hog.

Greens Aerification

Aerification.  The process the golf course superintendent loves and every golfer hates.  Most courses around town are completing greens aerification about this time and Swope is no different.  We wrapped ours up on Monday afternoon with very few hiccups.  I'm hoping this year we will have a shorter healing period than last year.  This is partly due to the great rain we received Tuesday night into Wednesday, and the use of a slightly smaller tine then last year.  We opted to use a smaller tine but more of them.  Instead of the aerifier having 24 large tines, we had 30 tines of a smaller size.  Last year we never had a nice, soaking rain post aerification.  This rain helps to flush the greens of built up sodium from our irrigation water and promote a flush of growth.  The cool nights forecasted will slow the growth somewhat, but by the weekend we are hoping for warmer temperatures.  Hopefully, in a week to ten days the greens are rolling back to normal. 

We are within one month of hosting the Kansas City Match Play Championship and have lots of work to do.  There are a few bunker projects and a few tees to resurface that we would like to accomplish before the tournament.  With the grass popping out of the ground, we will have to start focusing on more mowing.  With heavy downpours, the course gets extremely wet making it difficult to stay on top of the rough.  Be sure to bring a few extra golf balls because it can get pretty hairy out there! 

Soil Samples

This fall, we will be sending in a few soil samples from our greens to be analyzed.  The samples will provide us with valuable information that we can use to help formulate our fertility program for the coming year.  We will be able to see if we are deficient or high in different nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium as well as determine our pH and organic matter content.  We generally have samples tested once per year, and then compare our results from year to year.

Verticutting

We recently completed verticutting the greens for the second time in two weeks.  This is a great cultural practice to remove thatch from the top layer of the greens.  It promotes a more upright growth of the turf which will provide a cleaner cut with the mowers.  This will help in ball roll speed as well.  There is little negative impact to immediate playability of the greens.  We will also add a light sand topdressing after we are finished.  I hope to get one more verticutting in before temperatures really start to dive down. 

Blowing off any excess clippings not collected by the mower.

Close-up of green after verticutting.


 

Venting Greens

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, we completed the venting of our greens.  This is a cultural practice we do to improve the air and water movement under the surface.  There is little effect to play once we mow and roll the green right after the venting is complete.  The same machine that we aerify greens with in the spring and fall is used, but a different type of tine is used.  These tines look more like a knife, and do not pull any material out of the green.  The tines go about two and a half inches deep.  Completing this cultural practice once every three to four weeks will help with the long term success of the greens especially in July and August. 

Holes made by the bayonet tine.

Greens Aerification

On Sunday, April 1 we began the process of aerifying our greens.  It is a process that we complete once in the Spring and once in the Fall.  This year, we finished up on Tuesday, April 3, and had the course open for play on Wednesday.  It is a time consuming process that involves many steps to return the greens back to normal.

#8 Green

We begin by the actual aerification of the green.  We use a Toro Procore 648 with 1/2 inch tines.  This is a top of the line machine that makes the process much faster.  A windrow attachment brings the plugs into the center to allow for easier removal.  It takes about twenty minutes to complete a green.

The next step is picking up all of the cores.  We use a combination of a core harvester and lots of shovels.  It takes five to six hours to collect the cores. 

#11 Green topdressed with sand

We then topdress all the greens with sand.  This step takes the longest because the amount of sand used.  Three to four loads of a topdresser are used per green.  The sand then has to dry before a drag mat is used to work the sand into the holes.  Some of the excess sand is blown off the green with a buffalo blower. 

After the sand has been drug in, we can then begin rolling the green to help smooth them back out.  We use a machine that vibrates the ground as it goes along to help shake some of the excess sand into the holes.  At the same time, the rollers smooth out the surface.

After rolling is complete, we begin applying two different kinds of fertilizers.  This is the last step to complete aerification.  After the fertilizer is applied, we water the greens to soak in the sand and fertilizer. 

The greens will take some time to return back to normal.  Generally with good growing conditions, they will be back to normal in under two weeks.  Aerification is an essential cultural practice to promote root growth and drainage, and to relieve compaction.  We must aerify now to help produce good greens in the hottest part of the summer.