To say things didn't go as smoothly as hoped would be an understatement. We had the proverbial one step forward, two steps backwards week from hell. Within the first hour of aerifying the fairways, the machine broke...down for the day. Fortunately our head mechanic, Frank Novotny...an excellent wrench, was following the aerifier along and picking up the miscellaneous rock or stick that popped out.
That's when Keith and I got the call..."uhhh, hey Keith or Bill, you guys think you can come out to #10 for a minute?" Now you have to understand golf course mechanics, they are always fighting a losing battle to try and keep the machines working and cutting perfectly because the nature of the business it to beat the hell out of the equipment in the summer, so needless to say Frank was a little "upset" about the aerifier being broken. You can see in this picture where the steel tine hit the rock and snapped the metal link.
So when I rolled up to Frank to see what we going on he started hammering me about getting all the rocks out of the fairways and giving me the "we need to do this and we need to do that" business. Thinking I would placate him I said "ok, ok...I'll have a guy walk behind the aerifier and every time it hits a rock we'll flag the spot and have the guys dig up the rock."
All the while thinking there can't be that many rocks out here like the one that broke the aerifier. Right?! Well looking at the photos, I was way off, well once we got to #13 that is. Holes 1-12 had some rocks and sticks that we cleaned up in a couple of days. On hole 13 alone we had over 200 flags...meaning rocks to dig up.
Here are some of the hidden treasures we found on #10 in the rough areas.
Here is another pic of the fun we had with 13 fairway
As you can see, some were small
And some were not so small...we dumped all the large rocks on the lake banks behind 10 green and 13 tee so everyone could see what we dug up
This hole was from one rock, almost couldn't get it out!
In the end we will have dug up the majority of rocks on holes 1-14 and half of 18 (we just ran out of time to do them all). To repair the areas where we ripped up the grass getting the rocks out, we filled the holes with dirt and then sodded over them. Don't worry, we did a lot more clean up work around the newly sodded areas too.
To illustrate to you how punishing the aerification process is on the back 9 I took this pic. This is a new aerification tine compared to a "well used" one that we replaced after aerifying the rock. The new tine is solid hardened steel, 3/4" thick! The used tine is missing over an inch of material from smashing rocks.
*******I do want to point out that the rocks that are left in the golf course are not the contractor's fault. Where ever he dug or shaped and he hit a rock, he removed the rock. Some areas such as the left side of 10 rough or 13 fairway, the contractor didn't do a lot of earth work. In those areas where we didn't go down much beyond the initial scrape either do to existing irrigation lines or already installed drainage, we will have to remove the rock a little at a time over successive years.
On the front 9 fairways, tees, collars, and approaches we used a different type of aerification tine, a hollow tine that pulls a core out. We switched the process a little because these areas are sandy and I wanted to top dress these areas heavily anyway. Conversely, the back 9 is so rocky I didn't want to pull all of the pebbles to the surface and have another problem to deal with (the back 9 fairways will be top dressed with sand I will purchase). To break up all of the cores and get the sand to fall back into the grass canopy, a large steel drag mat is pulled behind a cart in a similar fashion as to what you have seen happen on the greens. This process separates the thatch from the sand so that the thatch can been blown off and removed and the sand can help maintain a firm surface.
In the end we did aerify everything. We broke a drive shaft, 4 steel arms, and a couple connection links, but we aerified everything. By the last day Frank and his assistant looked like a NASCAR pit crew when the aerifier came in for repair. We had air guns going, jacks flying, and wheels a spin'n baby...it was awesome!
Seriously though, when it comes to aerifying the greens in today's scientific mentality of golf maintenance it is all about "affected surface area" or how much of the green's surface did you remove. With todays high density ultra-dwarf putting greens, during the summer's aerification process you want to affect 30-50% of the green in total throughout the aerification season. Meaning you want to physically remove it! So in order to get to those stats it's all about hole size and spacing.
I aerify the greens with a 5/8" diameter hollow tine that pulls a 1/2" core and punch the holes approximately 1.5" apart. By closing the space between holes I can use a slightly smaller tine size as compared to 5 yrs ago. Using a smaller tine that is closer together allows me to creates a smaller hole which decrease the amount of time it takes to heal, but increases the amount of affected surface area (approx 15%). The old way was to use really large tines spaced about 2" apart which only gave you about 8% affected surface area. These large tines took forever to heal. The zig-zag pattern keeps the turf from pulling up when the machine pulls the cores out.
Everyone knows you aerify to alleviate compaction, but equally important is that you aerify to alleviate organic material as well. Notice all of the thatch and organic material that has built up over the last yr. Most of the sand has been knocked off, but the majority of the thing is thatch with a little greenery on the top. This is not necessarily a problem now, but in the short near future, if left unchecked, it would be. This is why I have all of the cores removed from the greens immediately following aerification. I do not want any additional organic material put back into the soil profile. Even the sand that we put back on the greens after aerification has no organics in it.
After aerification, its sand, brush, brush, brush, roll, roll, roll...
Many of you have seen my staff verti-cutting the greens and understand we do it to remove excess thatch and that it also helps with grain control. We do it frequently on the greens because the height of cut is so low. On the tees, collars, and approaches I had the guys use this machine to verti-cut the grass. It's called a Mat-a-way. Its a heavy duty veti-cutter that digs 1/2-1" into the soil and rips out the dead material. We used this machine on all tees and collars.
You can see here all of the thatch and snarly grass removed
I had plans to verti-cut the fairways this week, but we also ran into some bad luck there as well. First, our new machines were set up wrong so Frank had to repair that. Then, after using one of the fairway verti-cutters for only 5 seconds a bearing assembly blew apart. After that I had the vendor come pick the units up and take them back to their shop for repair and inspection. I mean if it weren't for bad luck this week we didn't have any.
On a more positive note though, we have started to receive some of our new capital items. One of the coolest pieces this year is a new irrigation monitoring system. The system uses wireless soil probes that are placed out in the ground on golf course and transmits the information back to my office where it is uploaded to a central computer and can be viewed on anything that can get onto the internet. The system is called Turf Guard and monitors soil temperature, salinity, and percent moisture.
Here is picture of what sort of information you can collect from the soil monitors. Notice the difference between the soil temperatures on 15 green and 16 green. You can see when I went from programing the sensors in the office to going outside, then you can see the temp changes as they were put in the greens. The top graph is sol moisture & the bottom graph is soil temp. Notice the inverse relationship! This is why we need a fan unit back in that cypress hammock so badly, we need to cool that green down so it loses less water and doesn't develope such disease issues. I've been watching the soil temperatures for a couple of days now and 15 green always runs 7-10 degrees hotter than 16 green.
Speaking of the devil, here's our new fan...yeah fan! Many of you are up north enjoying the searing heat waves and are used to seeing these things humming around the course to move the air. Well, research has shown that our new ultra-dwarf bermuda grass greens need air circulation just as much. The plan for the fan is to put it up in June and take it down some time around the end of September when the heat finally breaks. The unit will be on a timer that comes on around 10 a.m. and runs until 7 ish. I am putting the base in a valve box so when the fan comes down, you won't even know the mounting brackets is still there.
Ever see a one armed paper hanger? That's how life around a golf course is in the summer, gotta move fast before the glue dries! There's always more to do than hours of day light.
