100 Day War, Bringing in the heavies

Now that all of the light work is done, it's time to roll out the heavy guns...the aerifiers. Aerification does many things besides just annoy golfers.  One of the main purposes of the process is to relieve soil compaction. The process of core removal shatters the soil structure. This is great for allowing air and water to move downward through the soil. The freshly porous soil also allows the roots to move downward as well.  

Part of the maintenance practices done of the putting surface is to remove all of the aerification cores. The reason is simple... the solution to pollution is dilution. What that means is the secondary benefit of aerification is organic material removal. After the greens are cleaned off, the now open holes that were filled with a heavy organic soil are back ofilled with straight sand. It's this clean, un-polluted channel in the soil profile that allows the downward movement of the water, air and nutrients. Even with all of the holes punched in the green, the realistic affected surface area is only around 13-15%. Due to the relatively low percentage of affected surface area coupled with the fact that we have a 12 month growing season is why we need to aerify so much. 

You an see the collection blade pulled by the aerifiers to collect the cores on the green as it goes along. This attachment has saved a lot of man power and money cleaning up the greens. We added some sand bags to help hold it down. 

Once the greens are cleaned off the remaining sand is brushed in and the greens are blown off very well to open up as many of the holes as possible. Once that is done copious amounts of clean sand is applied to the putting surface and incorporated back into the holes. 

The rest of the course does not get as much scrutiny as the putting surfaces. The aerification plugs on the rest of the course are not removed. They are left in place to dry, once dry the soil is separated from the grass / thatch. The soil falls back down and the thatch material is blown off and clean up. Once cleaned up the areas are sanded as well. We simply do not have the time, money or man power to remove all the old cores from the golf course...and nobody is putting on the fairways. 

Cores laying on top

Sand separated from cores

Thatch separated from cores being blown off fairways

Fortunately the weather has been coming in really late afternoon, actually helping somewhat if you can believe that. This week's closure is shaping up to very successful. I'm pretty sure we will accomplish all of our goals.