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!