Greens aerification went about as good as I could have hoped, given the hurdles we faced. The plan was to do a core aerification with 1/2 inch tines. However as last week wore on and the forecast for Friday to Tuesday got more wet, I had 5/8 inch solid tines two day shipped to us. I knew we were already wet heading into the weekend. With rain forecasted on Friday night, Sunday night, and showers, clouds, drizzle for Monday and Tuesday, forging ahead with the coring tines didn't make much sense. The greens would have been too soft for the core harvester and we don't have the personnel to shovel. Plus the plugs wouldn't have dried out very well, if at all.
Here is what we came out to on Monday morning ...
Not ideal to say the least. Despite the weather we went to work. We had to make an adjustment after the first green when it was clear that they were too soft to be punched and top dressed after. So we started top dressing before punching them, which worked out fine. As for the top dressing, I knew given the wet greens and wet sand, that putting a bunch of top dressing down was a recipe for a headache. I knew going in that our best chance of doing a decent job getting the top dressing down while also having decent playing conditions was to do the top dressing a little at a time. We ended up top dressing three to four times between Monday and Wednesday. Dragging and blowing it in each day. This actually went better than I would have expected. I'd estimate we got 90% of the holes filled when all was said and done. And by Wednesday afternoon, the greens were very playable and rolling well. We also top dressed approaches as we went.
#4 with the first coat of top dressing ...
So the process ended up looking something like this:
- Top dress
- Aerify
- Drag
- Blow
- Seed
- Roll
- Cups
It is Saturday morning now and in a shocking turn of events, it rained last night and this morning ... But this rain is a good thing for the greens. I did go out and take a look and took some pictures that I'll put below. On top of all of this, we did also get our first fairway mow in. Didn't cut much but cleaned them up some and put some stripes out there for you. Hopefully the rain is done and we can have a good weekend!
#15 green this morning ...
I'm pretty happy all things considered. Thanks to the crew for putting up with a difficult few days and getting the job done.
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