Aerification: Day 3 Recap

Another successful day as our bi-annual process of aerification is beginning to come to an end.  Yesterday, emphasis was placed on finishing tees and starting to prep the course by mowing rough before play resumes on Saturday morning.  Daily attention was given to greens as well, below is a quick recap of yesterday's events:

Greens:

We put our third broom on greens yesterday afternoon followed by an fertility application to help in recovery.  Warmer temperatures and warmer soils are already showing the quick recovery process during this time of year.

 

This photo was taken of #11 after I drug it in on Tuesday afternoon.

 

 

Two days later on Thursday afternoon, you can already see more green as the sand is being worked into the canopy and and we are well on our way to recovery.

 

 

Mark and Max followed yesterday's broom crew to apply an organic fertilizer to help speed up the process and provide some stored nutrients during the stressful period of weeks to come during environmental stresses and self-inflicted stresses as I begin to return them to our standards with heights and speeds.

 

Tees:

 

Max finished up topdressing the tees on 1-7 in the morning.  Then Matt and Justin lead a crew in the afternoon while amending tees to drag and work the sand into the canopy.  As mentioned yesterday, we went extremely aggressive on tees to remove as much thatch as possible and in return incorporate sand to fill the voids and improve the firmness of each teeing ground.

 

 

 

Picture of the Staff working the sand into #4 tees

 

Oddly enough, the tees are smallest area of playing surface on the property but are also the most time consuming when it comes to the process of aerification.  Maneuverability due to size and surrounding slopes pose challenging in staying consistent with rates of sand and effect the ability to use mechanical means to work the sand in, end result is that a lot of work on tees is done by hand.

 

 

Today, we continue prepping the course for play tomorrow.  All the pushmowing and rough mowing will be completed after lunch.  We will prep bunkers since they haven't been touched all week.  We will have a crew follow a roller (used to smooth out the imperfections created from the aerification process) on greens with an additional broom.  This morning, we put a cut on fairways and Max/Matt did a heavier than normal light rate of topdressing on approaches.  Since, we were unable to do any cultural practice on approaches, we will likely repeat this process on Monday.