Aerating Greens

On Monday and Tuesday of this week (and Wednesday also, actually) we aerated all greens. It's now Saturday and time for an early assessment of the process.

Day One

We followed the same idea as last year and only required 3 guys to aerate the greens and pick the cores.

Cleaning Up Cores

Surface Immediately after
Aerating

The pattern we tried this time out was a tight 1.5" X 1.5" with an 3/8's - 3/4's cross tine set alternating with a 1/4 - 1/4 side eject set. With that combination of tines we pulled three 3/8's and four 1/4" cores and punched three 3/4 slices per holder for a total of forty-two holes and eighteen slices over the width of the aerator. Using an average size green at KGC and it works out to be 600,000 holes over the entire surface but because we used some cross tines (FYI cross tines just punch a hole in the shape of an X and don't remove any material) we really only pulled an average of 420,000 cores per green.

Day 2

2 Days After Aeration and
1 Day After Sand Top Dressing

We top dressed in two direction at a medium rate. I think that may have been a mistake since the larger holes may be too big to disappear in a timely fashion. My concern was adding too much sand and then end up stressing the greens while trying to incorporate/disperse the excess sand. We've done that before and that process comes with its own set of headaches.

Day 3

Some greens dried out more than others following aeration and on those stressed greens the larger holes remained prominent. Again, more sand would have helped here.

Day 4

Not really a whole lot different from the previous day. Although the weather was cool following aeration I don't really think that impacted recovery. The visible holes in the above picture are from the 3/8 's tines.

I guess good news is all the greens appear healthy and are growing. They are very soft not only from the aeration but also from all the extra water they are getting as we try to limit drought stress. We will have to top dress again but you won't notice. The mechanic, however, will since the reels will need extra sharpening this week. We will have play a bit with tine selection before our next aeration in the fall. We aerated the new putting green with all 3/8's on a 1.5"x1.5" spacing and it handled it not too bad. I know not every green on the course could handle that spacing but based on this aeration we may try using 1/4" tines on the 1.5"x1.5" spacing instead and see what comes of that.

More Wildlife

This week was busy with aerating and top dressing the greens and select areas on the fairways. I'll review how things went on the next post. This posting is short and is only meant to highlight some wild life sightings. This fox in the following picture has been cruising the course over the past couple days looking for "good eats".

Just after I took this picture he trotted directly next to my vehicle like I wasn't even there. I later saw him carrying what I hoped was a gopher in his mouth but, unfortunately, I think it was a chipmunk.

Not so unique but still awfully cute was this picture of a very new fawn that was born on Wednesday in the bush just off of 11 fairway.

They won't be such a nuisance if they stayed this small and lived in trees but I guess the squirrels pretty much have that market cornered.

It's been long time.

There hasn't been any new posts for a variety of reasons but the main one is that not much has been going on. The weather has put a damper on the play and some of our activities but it has made it easy to grow grass. I sort of feel guilty when all we have to do is mow. Heck, we haven't even had to water. It is getting so bad that the grass is starting to grow over our irrigation heads!

Starting this week things will change slightly since that is when we begin to aerate the greens. Last years spring aeration was fairly successful so we will try something along the same lines but with some changes (see July 8, 2010 for more info) . We weren't able to do the amount of aerating I was hoping last year so only using small 1/4" tines each time out would eventually catch up to us. We are going to try a combination of last springs and last falls aeration's which means just a few more big (3/8's) tines versus all little tines. As a demonstration we aerated the old putting green on Monday and saw positive results.

Putting Green Five Days
After Aeration

The decision on what combination of tines we use is based on the reasons why we are aerating and general health of the turf. As mentioned in older posts, this type of shallow aeration is mostly for thatch removal, compaction relief, and increased oxygen exchange in the upper root zone. I'll tell you a secret if you promise not to tell the other superintendents....most of our roots, if not all, are only in the top 2 - 3 inches of our greens. Pulling a core that is 5 to 6 inches deep just ends up puffing up the surface since there are no roots to hold down the turf at that depth. Unfortunately, it's sort of a chicken and egg argument: you won't have deeper roots if you don't give them somewhere to go and you can't pull a deep core unless there is a deep enough root mass. We could always pull a deep core and just deal with puffy greens but it my job to find a happy medium between beneficial maintenance practices and playability. By using a tighter spacing and removing more material we have been slowly increasing root mass in the top couple inches (I make that bold statement based not on any hard empirical data but more on off-hand observations such as general firmness, slightly longer times between watering, and visual observation of root mass). Ultimately, with the help of deep tine aeration and slowly increasing the depth at which we pull a core I hope to increase root depth. However, with a mostly Poa annua grass and suspect irrigation coverage I'm sometimes just happy to see the mowers getting any grass at all!

Flower and Fusarium

Once the rain quit and the sun came out there was a fairly showy flower display throughout the entire course. I'll guess most everybody knows what is what but here is a few pictures of the most obvious flowers out now.

Saskatoon Bush

Saskatoon's are all over especially on the outside borders of the course. Luckily most people from B.C. think they are too dry (?) but for a stubble jumper such as myself they are a great treat.

Oregon Grape.

This bush is all over in the deep rough. Apparently you can make a jelly out of the berries? I guess it might be worth a try just make sure to stay away from those dry, icky saskatoon berries.

Triple Combo

A combination chokecherry, trembling aspen and another yucky saskatoon bush

Balsamroot

Everyone has seen these on the south facing dry slopes at the golf course. I guess the good news is you can eat the leaves and even use them for smokin'. Nice option instead of eating saskatoon berries which, as everyone knows, are no good.

Oh yeah, and don't forget the poa flower. Obviously completely different from normal flowers the type of infloresence on the poa is what makes the fairways appear white and can affect ball roll on some of greens (see kimberleygolfclub.blogspot.com/2010/06/poa-in-full-flower.html for more information)

As nice as the wet and somewhat cool weather has been for the native plants blossom production it has been equally nasty for disease development. All greens, some worse than others, have small round, reddish brown spots which are the symptoms of a fungal infection known as Microdochium (or old school punks such as myself call it Fusarium) patch. Interestingly enough it is the same pathogen that causes pink snow mould with the only difference between the two occurrences is the type of weather. As an overwintering disease it can cause significant damage and it is one of the reasons we have to treat the turf to help ensure there is limited damage in the spring. As a spring/early summer disease it is usually not as severe and sometimes all that is needed is a change in the weather, a little nutrition and the turf can take care of itself. This may not be one of those times since it appears we are headed back into a damp cool trend weather wise. (see kimberleygolfclub.blogspot.com/2010/05/week-of-may-23.html for more of the same regarding spring disease).

Small Fusarium Spots

Large Fusarium Spots