News
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19th Hole
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FROM YOUR SUPERINTENDENT AERATION
It is again the time of year where we will be aerating our putting greens. This is never a popular cultural practice, but it is by far the most important Turf management practice we do all year. Weather permitting we will be aerating greens, collars and tees Sunday afternoon August 24th and finishing Monday August 25th. We will be using a 3/8 inch hollow aeration tine on greens and collars and a 5/8 inch hollow aeration tine on tees. After removal of the plugs on greens we will be topdressing them with sand, and we do our best to fill the holes completely, which can be very difficult to accomplish because of the amount of material it takes, that is why we do a follow up top-dressing a week or so after the initial topdressing. We will also interseed A4 bentgrass to the greens and collars and hope that the seed germinates and fills in weak spots on the greens. We will raise the mowing height on our greens mowers to help speed up the recovery of the aeration holes. We also apply fertilizer and gypsum to help this process along and try to make the greens as healthy as possible. This year because we have had such a wet season we will also be aerating the 11th, 12th, and 16th greens at least one more time this fall to help get a better soil profile on those small compacted greens, and hopefully get a fair amount of new bentgrass seedlings on the weak areas of those greens. As time and weather allows we will also aerate as many fairways as we can this fall.
We aerate for several reasons, but the most important reason is to relieve soil compaction from the daily barrage of golfers and mowers on the putting surfaces. I always tell people to imagine your own lawn having 100-150 people walking on it everyday and a mower on it everyday. The lawn would be quite beat up, the same thing happens to our greens, tees and fairways all season long. Therefore we need to relieve that stress by aerating to allow oxygen and nutrients to get to the root zone of the Turf plants and to allow the roots to expand deeper in the soil profile and be healthier going into the fall and the harsh winters we have. We apply the sand topdressing to provide a better draining and smoother playing surface, and to allow better root growth through the soil profile all season long.
We ask for your patience throughout this extremely important aerating practice, and remember we do it to try and make our course better every year, not to aggravate golfers. If you have any questions on aeration or any other Turf management practices please feel free to ask me.
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