Preparing for Battle - First aerification is next week

This week the focus has been in prepping all needed materials and supplies for next week's assault on the golf course. The first aerification of the year signals the start of what I call the annual "100 day war!" For the next 100 days everything we do will be for next winter's golfing season. All the verti-cutting, aerifications, sandings, and whatever else is to ensure we make it through until the summer of 2012 with as good a golf course as we had in 2011.

So I thought I would use this posting to show you some of my weapons of choice. These are very specialized pieces of equipment designed to do specific jobs. One of my favorite machines is the verti-cutter! You hear me saying all the time we verti-cut this or we verti-cut that, and only see the results and not what is used to do it. "Verti-cutter" is a trade name taken from the process of vertical mowing. As seen below in the pictures, the blade that is normally horizontal (first picture) has been turn vertical (second picture), hence the "verti" part and we all get where the "cutter" part comes in. The verti-cutter picture below is of a green's verti-cutter. Notice the small blades and narrow spacing. This verti-cutter is set to cut 1/8" deep into the turf. This way it digs a little, but not too aggressively. Since we verti-cut all the time we can go less aggressive than say the fairways.

In this picture I took a normal reel mower and stood it on end and shot the picture looking down the length of the cutting unit to show you how it cuts. A reel mower uses a helixed reel with multiple blades using a fixed knife on bottom to produce a scissor action type cutting. Very precise cut! The helix in the real is critical to producing a constant scissor action while the reel travels over the ground.


This picture is of a green's vertical mower. It is made for ripping out material, not precision.


The blades of the green's vertical mower have a carbide tip that is super hard and stays sharp. If anyone is wondering of the power of these units, see the picture below. This picture is of the concrete floor in my shop where someone turned on the verti-cutter while it was sitting on the floor. Its a good visual on what it does to the surface of the green and attests to the power of the unit. Yes, those are grooves in the concrete caused by the carbide tipped vertical mower blades used on the greens!



In the fairways we use the big brother to the green's vertical mower. This machine uses extremely large vertical blades that are set 1/2" to 1" deep. The reason for such an aggressive approach is that we only have one or two chances all year to do this procedure.



The main reasons for verti-cutting, regardless of where, are to eliminate thatch and control grain. Thatch is the dead plant material building up on top of the soil and grain is the tendency of the plant to lay over in a particular direction. Hopefully everyone has seen the short video I did on verti-cutting the greens a few posts back. You can look at the green and see a "swirl" type pattern or large color differences to identify the grain. In the fairway the swirl can become very accentuated and tight. The picture below is of the grain in one of our fairways. Grain is a natural phenomenon in every grass and is a little more pronounced in the Celebration because of its aggressive growth habit. Remember, we haven't verti-cut these fairways since August of last year.



In this picture I pulled up on some of the swirled grass just to show you how much it was laying over, about 3-5 inches. The only way to eliminate this is to physically remove it. We will do this by verti-cutting first, which rips out the thatch and stands up the grass that is laying over, then we will scalp off any remaining material by circle cutting the fairways. The result will be a plant that is more upright in growth habit.



Here is picture of the process


Here is short video of the process in the fairways so you can get a sense of how intensive the whole ordeal is. Just remember, after verti-cutting we have to clean up the whole mess too.






One of my other favorite machines is the aerifier. This machine is without a doubt, the second best piece of equipment I have. The first is the walking greens mower, but the aerifier is what allows me to maintain such great putting surfaces. The action of the machine is really quite simple, pound a metal tube into the ground and pull it out. Sounds simple right?! Actually, these machines are very highly engineered pieces of modern turf equipment. With an aerifier, everything on the back of the machine has to be synchronized to produce a balanced operating aerifier head.

In this picture notice the vertical arms that are connected to the big flywheel at the top. These arms are called stomper arms for a good reason and travel up and down at massive speeds with tremendous force to shove the tines into the compacted soil.



The tines on the machine can be changed to accomplish different tasks. In the summer I use a hollow tine on the greens which pull a core out of the soil profile. When the stomper arm pushes the tines into the soil they are filled with a core. When the stomper are goes up it takes the core inside the tine with it. Then when the stomper arm goes back down and pushes the tine into the soil the next time, the new core pushes out the old core that was already in the tine. Notice how the inside of the tines is curved at the top, this is to eject the cores away from the aerifier.



In this picture are two different tines, one is for winter aerification and one is for summer. Same machine, just different tines for different objectives.



Once everything has been verti-cut and aerified it will be time to start the sanding process. We use specially screened sands for different things. The size and shape of the sands used is very important. Also important is whether or not we add amendments to the sands. When a green is first built, the reason for adding organics in the sand profile is to help the sand hold some moisture and nutrients. After greens mature a little bit and build up organics in the soil profile on their own, its time to stop adding organic amendments to the top dressing. We are now at the point where we really need to control how much organics we let build up in the soil of the greens. To manage soil organics we completely remove all the cores after aerification and back fill the holes with straight sand. Using straight sand at this point maintains the physical performance standards of the soil profile by continually diluting any organics left over. Excess organics in the soil leads to many problems such as sponginess, water logging, disease, and poor quality turf

This picture shows you the difference in some of the sands we use. I took a handful of green's top dressing sand in threw it into the divot sand we use. Notice the drastic difference in color...same sands, two very different uses for them. The divot sand has some organics blended into it to help hold some water in the sand while the grass divot heals. The organics also help take away some of the stark whiteness of the sand. The sand used on the greens has no organics and promotes drainage and firmness.



This winter I got a lot of questions on why I switched from the green divot sand to the new stuff. The answer has to do with soil science. The green sand is made by filling a giant mixer, think of a cement truck type mechanism, with sand and green latex paint. The sand and paint is mixed together until all of the individual sand particles are completely covered with latex. That latex, once buried in a divot, will remain there just a green until the golf course is reconstructed again in another 46 years. That "green" doesn't breakdown very well once the sun cannot degradate the latex.

The newer material I'm using is regular sand mixed with compost. It still maintains all of the soil physical properties of the sand that the latex eliminates, helps with a little soil moisture retention that the green stuff didn't do, and is a lot cheaper to buy. Its a win, win, win! In the beginning I was buying the new sand that was mixed with some rough grade compost and it has some small "stuff" in it that was objectionable. Now I'm buying materials that are screened so that issue shouldn't be a problem anymore.