August Aerification Week

Another aerification week has come and gone...all things considered, it went fairly well. We started off the week with a lot of afternoon rain, which during a week when you are beating up the course is a kiss of death. Monday and Tuesday we spent all morning making a huge mess hoping it would stay hot and dry so we could have an easy clean up only to see the storm clouds building up to the south of us. Fortunately we had already planned on working the course in small sections at a time in case it rained so the race to clean everything up before it turns into a huge pile of mud wasn't so bad. Despite our Monday and Tuesday woes, the rest of the week was really productive as the weather held out for us.

As usual during our aerification weeks, late on Sunday afternoon the greens were aerified. One thing I did differently this time was to use a smaller tine which produced a small hole. The reason I did this was because I wanted to remove less of the mat layer or the "cushion" under the grass so the greens will become more receptive. I was asked a great question the other day, "why are you aerifying the greens so much if we want to build up a mat layer to soften the greens?" The answer is that its all about managing the build up.

Try to imagine the soil profile as a large tank, and the grass building up the mat layer which make the greens more receptive is like a hose filling the tank up. As the grass grows, it naturally fills up the tank. Now think of the aerification process like a drain at the bottom of the tank. To make sure the tank doesn't over flow we have to open the valve (aerify) to let some of the water out of the tank. We want some thatch and organic material because that's what make the greens receptive, but not too much thatch because it can be negative to the grass's health and playability. So my job is to open the drain on the tank just enough to moderate what gets taken out to build up the right amount of mat layer. All the while being mindful that we don't want too much thatch to build up over the summer because I can only aerify greens in the summer and we have a long golfing season ahead of us that will be adding to the tank. It's a balancing act between depleting the tank enough so it can hold all the water (thatch) until next summer when we can't aerify, while managing for playability and long term health. Basically I have to match what I remove with what gets put in, and leave a little room for expansion.


Here is a pic of a typical green's profile on our course. Notice the brown stuff or mat layer just below the grass. This is what we were missing last year when the course reopened, its the cushion that makes the greens receptive and can only be had with a little bit of age.


On the fairways this week we concentrated on heavy verti-cutting and sanding. The verti-cutitng process is the same as what we do for the greens, just much more aggressive. Check out this small video and you can see what I mean.


Here's a pic...notice how much material is flying out of the machine


As you can see, aggressive might be an understatement! Since we can't lightly verti-cut the fairways all the time like we do the greens, we have to go in an really rip them in the summer. This process removes the thatch and what I call the "bowl of spaghetti" growth habit of the grass. What I mean is that over time the grass will start to lay over and grow to be a very gnarly, tangled mess like a bowl of spaghetti. By verti-cutting the grass, all of the interwoven strings of "spaghetti" are removed allowing the grass to grow upright.

Once the fairway has been verti-cut, a large turf vacuum is used to remove all of the thatch and long runners of grass that were just cut. Once vacuumed, the fairway is mowed on last time, then blown off to prepare for the last step.


Afterward the clean up process, all of the fairways were top dressed and brushed to promote a firm surface and maintain a sandy upper profile. I had 20 truck loads of sand brought in (that's approximately 460 tons of sand) to spread over the course. The entire process took 2 ten hour days to complete.


Like the greens surface, the addition of sand to the fairway soil profile is an excellent way to maintain a high quality playing surface. Many of you remember sanding the fairways years ago to help with the very heavy accumulation of organics from the old course, and by do so now we can maintain a good firm fairway. Here is pic of a sand profile from a front 9 fairway. As you can see, it has appreciable thatch built up (the brown stuff under the grass) in just one year. This is a testament to the good growing conditions on the front 9 due to the very sandy soils and is exactly the reason for the heavy verti-cutting. The addition of sand, in combination with verti-cutting will helps break down the thatch much better.


Now here is a pic of a soil profile from the back 9 fairways and it's composition is much different. You can see it is very rocky and the thatch layer isn't as developed as the profile from the front. Again, this is attributable to the harder growing conditions on the back. I will have the back 9 fairways top dressed heavier to promote a better growing environment and hopefully a better playing surface.


During our closed week I scheduled a site visit from the area USGA Agronomist. Now that we have our new course I wanted to make sure we are on the right track to having a healthy and beautiful golf course for a long, long time. Through the USGA's Turf Advisory Service, we can have a non-biased "audit" if you will of our maintenance practices. The Agronomist reviews course conditions compared to practices and will give us recommendations or comments on what we are doing, might want to consider doing, or even what they see others doing that is successful. After the visit, the USGA will send the Club a formal report of their findings and recommendation for the us to consider. I will have the USGA in semi-annually for this service.

Here is pic of the Agronomist explaining his finding on #1 green. This is a great learning process for assistants. In the pic is my assistant Keith, Mr. Dean, Todd Lowe with the USGA, and a couple of USGA interns.


Another project I started last week was trimming palm trees. The good news is that I was fortunate to hire a former tree trimmer a while ago so I decided to tackle this project in house. The bad news is that the trees haven't been trimmed in a few years so there is a massive amount of material to trim off each tree which is making the process very slow. I was asking my trimmer how he was doing and he said that while he is trimming 50-70 trees a day now, on trees that were trimmed last year he could trim almost 100 a day.

Here you can see the one palm that is trimmed as compared to the two others that are about to be. BIG DIFFERENCE!



This pic is kinda like a "where's Waldo" picture...he's in there, I promise!


Once all of the fronds are trimmed off, my staff comes around and picks the material up and hauls it to back to my maintenance compound. All of this material will be shred on site and then reused in the mulch beds.


Lastly, this week I had scheduled to have all of the landscape enhancements finished up. That was until we received 2.5" of rain yesterday which killed any ideas of planting palm trees. The grasses will still be planted, but we will need to finish up some of the areas when it dries out due to heavy puddling in some areas.

Here are all the plants waiting to be planted


Here is some new grasses behind 3 green along the road that were just planted


Here is the new plantings on 8. As you can see, we have received some substantial rain lately


Here is a pic of the new bushes planted behind 14 green to fill in the empty spaces


Here is a pic of the right side of 16 tees


After all of the grasses are planted we will go behind and put in fresh mulch to finish dressing up the new look.

You guessed it, more rain. We are constantly checking drain lids for grass clippings that clog the drain lids


Hope your summer is going well. See ya soon!