Aerification Season is Here

 

Its hard to believe Labor Day weekend is here already.  This means aerification season is right around the corner.  I want to let everyone know our tentative schedule and the process we plan to implement. 

Tuesday September 4^th  - Front nine greens and practice green

Wednesday September 5^th – Back nine greens

Thursday, Friday, and the following week until complete – fairways

We will be pulling cores out of the greens the same as we did in the spring.  We will be collecting all the plugs this time, instead of dragging and working them back into the soil.  After collecting the plugs, we will apply a heavy layer of topdressing sand and brush it in to fill the open holes.  Fertilizer has already been applied to promote growth and help the holes close as quickly as possible. Another application of fertilizer will be made at the end of next week.

 

 

We will also be pulling cores on the fairways.  We will drag metal drag mats over the plugs until the soil is pulverized and worked back into the ground.  The thatch will be blown off into the rough and mulched or collected as needed.

 If your asking in your mind about the tees, we aerified them in June.  Since they are Zoysia, they need aerified in the hot weather.  Punching holes in the tees now could leave openings underground leading into the dormant season.  This could potentially result in some winter kill of this warm season turf.

Plans for aerification may be impacted by weather (i.e. Hurricane Isaac).  Revisions to the schedule will be made accordingly.  Thank you in advance for the cooperation and understanding as we will work hard to have the course back in tip-top shape as quickly as possible.

It’s a Bird.  No, it’s a Plane…

            …Nope, it was rain! 

Wow! What an amazing difference rain can have on a golf course.  We received 1.41 inches of rain on August 16^th.  That was the largest rainfall here at the golf course during the growing season in the last year.  Hard to believe, right?  We managed to survive 50 straight days without a rainfall that eclipsed more than .05 inches.  To make circumstances worse, July was the hottest ever recorded.  26 of 31 days surpassed 90 degrees, and 8 of those days broke 100.  July 7^th marked our hottest day of the year at 108 degrees.  This officially makes 3 very difficult grass growing years in a row, and the last 2 years don’t hold a candle to this year.  This being said, we have a few areas to recover.  It is only August 20^th, and our best recovery days are ahead.  The plan on filling in our weaker areas is to continue promoting the growth of the bentgrass.  I think we can close the gap in many areas by fertilizing fairways and slowing the Poa by continuing spraying Velocity.  I anticipate doing a little seeding and patching in some other areas with bentgrass sod from our nursery.  The good news is we have plenty of seed left from last year and I only project a half day’s worth of seeding compared to the week of sun-up to sun-down seeding we did last September.

Rainfall totals recorded at DCC this year:

Jan - 4.2”                                Apr - 1.80”                              July – 0.14”              

Feb - 0.49”                             May – 1.75”

March – 1.71”                        June – 1.05”

           

I would like to ease a few minds about the Velocity before we get too far away from the subject.  In no way did Velocity cause the bad areas we currently have in our fairways.  Lack of rain and irrigation, heat, and disease were the root of all our problems.  Our May and June applications of Velocity increased our percentage of bentgrass more than I ever imagined and I believe our “bad areas” would have been much worse if there was more Poa.  Our best estimation in early spring was that we had maybe 40 percent bentgrass and 60 percent Poa.  Now we estimate having 70 percent bentgrass and 30 percent Poa.  If all goes according to plan, we should continue increasing our percentage of bentgrass over the next couple months.

#1 in August of 2011

#1 one year later