Greens Aeration

Monday morning we began our spring aeration of greens. With many important tournaments coming up in less than a month, we have made the decision to modify our agronomic plan to make sure our greens are completely healed and rolling their best in time for these tournaments. This year we will be forgoing the usual hollow tine aeration for a much less invasive solid-tine option.

Normally we will run our Soil Reliever with 12" solid tines over greens first, followed by an Aercore with 5/8" hollow tines set at 2"x2" spacing. Due to the large amount of surface area actually removed by the hollow tines, the green is quite soft and requires more time to become smooth again. As we mentioned in earlier posts, core aeration is crucial for our turf to weather the hot, dry weather typical of summer on the Front Range. While we are not removing any organic matter or thatch this spring, we are diluting it with heavy sand topdressing and by opening up the profile, we aid in water infiltration and gas exchange.

So, we will run our Verti-Drain as normal, but in place of hollow tines, we will double spike with our custom-built spiker.  Our Equipment Manager Jim Bloesch built this spiker last spring, and as usual his creation has worked flawlessly and been a great addition to our greens maintenance regimen. Jim can build and fix anything, and this spiker is a great example of his fabrication skills. Hats off to Jim for a job well done.

The use of the spiker will in effect create thousands of small 1/8" holes in the greens surface, allowing water and oxygen to enter the root zone. The holes will be almost invisible to the naked eye after a heavy topdressing is applied and the greens are smoothed with a 1-ton roller.

When the process is complete, we should have applied about 25 tons of topdressing sand to 21 greens.  Once the sand has dried it is worked in gently with a cocoa drag mat. There isn't a better opportunity to modify the soil profile with sand than during aerification. 

Open holes also present a perfect opportunity to introduce nutrients into the soil profile, so Gypsum, Sulfate of Potash, and Earthworks DPW will be applied before we topdress. We will soak greens heavily to help work the sand in and flush sodium out of the root zone that has built up over the winter season.

We understand the disruption caused by aeration, and only hope that our efforts to speed up the healing process will show our commitment to our guests and their enjoyment of our facility. I would like to point out that Tom Watson shot the course record 58 at Kansas City Country Club only two days following a core aeration of their greens, so a high level of golf is possible following aeration.