Thursday, July 7, 2011

More aeration

What to write about when nothing seems new? I guess I could do a quick review of the past couple weeks. We continued with aerating other spots once the greens where done. I made mention of why we aerate and top dress the collars and aprons in the past (see aerating collars) and the same reasons still hold true this time out.


Puchin' #13 Approach

We also took the time to aerate select spots on the certain fairways. We've done this many times in the past during early summer and it has resulted in better conditions during the remainder of the season for those select spots. We choose areas that a prone to drying out and, as a result, require extra work to keep them playable and looking good. We try to punch as many holes as possible and then overseed those areas with a blend of bluegrass/rye grass seed. I like to reuse the cores we collect from the spring greens aeration mixed with one part Nature's Gold (commercial compost composed of ..... you don't want to know but if you know someone in Kelowna chances are pretty good some of their "business" is on our fairways) and one part sand. We lay it on pretty thick with the hope of filling the newly created holes. The top dressing will also cover the seeds which helps give a better catch.

Aerating and Cleaning Cores
at Lone Pine

The next area to see the aerator will be the tees but I think everybody needs a bit of reprieve so chances are we won't be doing tees until the end of July.

One more quick comment about the greens aeration. I can see with the benefit of hindsight that the greens at KGC didn't really respond the way I had hoped. Although they are growing well with lots of grass and new roots are starting to appear they are still too soft. With the heat arriving last weekend I was happy with how well they coped, however, that was short lived and now we are having to hand water LDS (Localized Dry Spots) like crazy. Ultimately, the greens will be better off but my preference would be to not deal with the problems we are facing now. This falls aeration will not be as aggressive as I alluded to in the last post but more likely a repeat of the 2010 fall aeration (2010 fall aeration)

4 Green Surface