We have had an extremely busy May and first half of June. The golf management department is getting into its normal summertime maintenance routine with mowing all our short grass (tees/fwys/approaches) 3-5 times per week depending on weather. We are also mowing rough twice a week and fly mowing bunkers weekly. To put this into perspective for you we are mowing 200 acres of turf a week. And I'm not even counting greens which is another 3.5 acres mowed 10 to 14 times a week which is another 35 acres.
On May 19, 2014 we aerified all our greens with a 3/8" hollow tine on a 2" by 2" spacing. Cleaned up the plugs and rolled greens two directions with a salsco roller. Our objective was to remove organic matter (thatch), aid in water infiltration and most importantly allow some much needed gas exchange to take place in the root zone. It had been 10 months since any significant aeration had occurred on the greens and man did they respond well.
Greens aerification in progress.
Salsco rolling greens after plugs have been cleared.
In the photo above you can see the root system on this green is around two inches. This sample was taken May 26 with a soil probe. Please compair with the photo below.
This sample was taken literally 1" from the sample above at the same time on the same day. The only difference being I put the soil probe directly over a aerification hole that was made 7 days prior. Note the length and amount of roots above.
The two photos above perfectly describe the benefits of aerification better than I could ever do with words. And this was only with a 3/8" tine and no sand added back to fill the hole. Imagine the root mass our greens are going to gain when we do our major aerification in July.
We are atypical in our approach to aerification. The majority of golf courses that have Bermuda greens in the southeast perform two aerifications per year. One typically in late May or early June and another sometime in August. We have crafted our maintenance program to include three aerifications a year with two of them taking place during the month of July, a week apart from each other. I'm getting ahead of myself..... I'll talk more about our major (disruptive) aeration as that takes place.
Once we got past aerification which only took us one day and caused very little impact to playability we have started our normal summer cultural practices. During the prime growing season (May-October) for Bermuda in our area we veticutt our greens every 7 to 10 days and apply a light amount of sand and follow up the sand with a brush to insure the sand works down into the turf canopy.
We typically go in two different directions when we verticutt and always make a pass up and down the same line. We do this because as you move across a Bermuda green in any direction the grain changes. In order to reduce grain you must go in both directions over the same pass. If not, you will only intensify the grain and adversely effect ball roll. As you can see from the picture we are pulling up quite a bit of grass and organic matter that is building up just below the turf surface. We typically verticutt our green to a depth of 1/32 to 1/16 of an inch. I know, it doesn't sound like much but as you can see above we are pulling out a lot of material. Following the verticutter is a blower to clear the green of excess grass then a mower to clean up the grass and smooth the green prior to sanding.
Grooves made from the verticutter. These are extremely important because they allow channels so to speak for the sand to settle into.
Brushing greens. This is used to help work sand into the channels and leaf canopy so we don't pick it all up the next time we mow.
So, now your up to speed on greens maintenance but I have much more to share. Unfortunately, at this moment, I am out of time. I will contine this again in the near future. Thanks for reading!