Aeration a Success

Last week the GCM staff completed the green’s aerification process. Although the practices were new to the staff, our preparation paid off. It took two 15 hour days plus a 5 hour evening on Sunday. 

The aeration was done with our staff catching the cores as they are pulled from the green.

The green was then blown off and watered to make sure the holes were as open as possible to receive as much sand as possible.C

The greens were topdressed using dry sand with push brooms.

The greens are eleven days out from aeration and the holes are 60-75% grown in. The fast healing is due to the manual labor put into the aeration process. Minimizing the use of large machines on the turfgrass lessens the damage done to it and allows it to recover quicker (Figure 1). We topdressed the greens on Thursday the 17^th to increase the smoothness on the greens. We are now back on our weekly topdressing program going forward.

Factoids from Aeration:

·       -  The process took 35 hours in 2.25 days

·       -  Used 1 aerifier with 5/8 inch hollow core tines that pulled cores 2 inches deep

·       -  10,000 ft² of turfgrass area removed

·       -  19 people involved

·     -    Used 48,450 lbs of sand to fill holes (24.3 tons) 

·      -   50 gallons of water and Gatorade consumed by staff

The aerification last week did not go into the collar or rough surrounding the greens (Figure 2). This is to reduce the risk of contaminating the putting green surface with other cultivars of bermudagrass. This past Monday we went with a smaller tine (3/8) and did one pass around the outer edges of the greens to get the areas that were skipped last week.

Hand Fertility Helps Weak Areas

One of the simple tasks done by the staff at The Peninsula Club is to monitor our very small, weaker areas on greens. These areas may have shade, traffic, rootzone or other challenges to maintaining a dense healthy turfgrass. The rest of the green that is healthy may not require the extra fertility but the weaker areas do.

Therefore, one of the many things we do to make these areas better is to hand fertilize with a 50:50 mix of sand and organic fertilizer (Figure 1). This mix fills in voids with extra topdressing and gives the area much needed fertilizer that has no risk of harming the grass. This is a simple task done without most golfers noticing that we have done this practice.

Assistant Jesse Cigary hand applies a 50:50 mix of topdressing sand and an organic fertilizer to weak areas on the edges of greens.