Spring Fairway Aerification

Our Spring Fairway Aerification immediately follows the greens and tee aerification. It usually takes between 5-6 weeks to get everything aerified and top dressed. There are several reasons why this process is important culturally including increased air flow to the roots, compaction relief, and removal of built up organic debris also known as 'thatch'. Because our fairways are predominantly bentgrass which is a high thatch producing grass, we verticut the fairways before the aerifier punched them. Verticutting is a way to thin out the turf as well as remove thatch, using vertical blades that are set the desired depth.

 Fairway Aerification includes the following steps ( flag the heads, verticutting the fairway, aerifing, cleaning up the plugs with a sweeper and Pro-Gators, blowing/dragging the fairway, gypsum application, sand topdressing, and the last step is to drag the sand in the open holes.) Most of the process are shown in photo's below.

This is a photo of #10 being Verticut by the Graden. Notice that the rough in the left of this photo is verticut as well, this is one of our high traffic areas.

 

After the hole has been verticut the aefier then proceeds, this photo shows the operator going in a different direction on a mound in order to get a deeper plug.

After the hole has been aerified it is cleaned. This photo shows the tc-125 sweeper being pulled by a pro-gator. When the sweeper is full it is emptied in the back of a pro-gator, and the plugs are dumped on maintenace paths and/or the village c lot.

While the sweeper is picking up plugs there are a couple people using snow shovels to push cores out of low areas, which are either hand shoveled or picked up later with the sweeper.



Right behind the Sweeper is the blower which also has a drag mat attached, this picks up any smashed cores and debris and moves them to the pile for the sweeper to pick up.




After the gypsum and sand are put down, the fairway is gone over with a drag mat. The objective is to fill the holes and spread the sand out evenly.



This is an example of an area that has been dragged already to one that has not.



Spring Greens Aerifications

Spring Aerification is a chance for use to help relieve the greens from all the stress endured during the fall and winter, which ensures we will have healthy greens going into the summer. Aerification helps remove all the built up organic matter which gives the  roots a chance to breath, increasing air movement and infiltration.  At TPC Stonebrae our greens aerification process involves a number of steps which are shown in the photos below.



This photo shows first three process of greens aerification at the practice center. First all the head are flagged so they are visable for operaters running the aerifiers. Secondly once the heads are marked the aerifiers proceed to aerate the area. Then after the area has been aerified snow shovels are used to push the plugs into piles off the green, where they can then be picked up using scoop shovels and a John Deere Pro Gator.



After the plugs have been cleaned the green is brushed with a greens groomer. This process helps to clean the surface and stands up the leaf blades, so sand will easily fill the holes.

After being brushed the remaning debris are blow off the greens surface using a buffalo blower.

Since we removed a lot of surface area of the green, they are then handwatered to prevent any stress which could slow the recovery process.

Now the greens are ready for sand. This photo shows both the topdresser and the method used to fill the holes. Once the sand is on the green, blowers are then used to moved the sand across the green, while filling the holes in the process. It's a fast and effecient process.

This is a photo of the green after the  holes are filled with sand.

After the holes are filled the greens are then double rolled to help smooth the surface.

Then the greens are ready for the ammendments. The Following ammendments were applied using push spreaders( Triple Seven Fertilizer, Grow Power Mg, and Cal-CM-Plus).

The ammendments are then watered  in, which helps break them down so they are readily available to the plant.