Deep tined greens aeration continued

We have been able to complete 8 greens over the last couple of days with our fall deep tined aeration program after the outing on Tuesday and before regular play in the mornings.  Greens 1-4, 15-16, 18 and the PG have been completed.  17 green will be completed tomorrow morning.  We hope to complete the remaining 9 greens by Monday(we will work until dark) or Tuesday morning at the latest.  It is always our desire to complete our greens program within a couple of days so that recovery of all greens occurs at the same time but weather and business interests require us to adapt our strategy from time to time.  We still have some great growing weather over the next few weeks for our greens to recover but I did not want to delay our program for another week.  We've had exceptional conditions to complete the greens this week without interfering with any groups except for a couple of early morning single players.  Weather sites have been reporting over the last 7 days that a change in our dry pattern(rain) is going to take place over the weekend and possibly into next week so it was time to start.            

We began today to dry mow the greens that were aerated on Tuesday(1-4).  The greens had an additional dragging of the surface and the subsequent mowing of them looked great.  The process we utilize in completing our aeration is slow and takes at least two days and sometimes a part of a 3rd day to complete.

Our desire is to have equal or better ball roll within a few days of completing our work as what we had before the process started.  

We appreciate your consideration during this most important process.

Russ aerating 18 green with our 7316 Verti-drain.
Mechanic Harry did the honors on Tuesday.

The rear view of our process.  We placed the sand on the green first to reduce the potential tracking from our sand topdressor and utility vehicle.  Normally our sand applications are made with a spinning type broad casting mechanism but with a heavy band type application, we used our brush attachment which provided a 1/8' layer of sand on the green.  Most greens received about 2.5 tons of sand on average.

The spacing of the aeration holes in relation to my cell phone.  About 2.5" apart.

This is a view of Russ dragging today of one of our finished greens from Tuesday.  We normally used our drag brush directly after the aeration was complete and before the sand was blown in the holes.

Here Russ is using our leaf blower to blow sand across the green which helps to fill holes full of sand.

Tom is also helping to fill holes along the edge where excess sand can build up.

Assistant Mike is rolling the green to smooth the surface and place it back into play.  Normally, we will mow our greens at the end of the process but our turf is so tight at this time from recent grooming/verti-cutting that there is very little turf that needed to be cut.  We will brush the greens again on the second day after aeration and will then mow them as they begin to grow.

4 green today after being brushed and mowed.

The greens surface with holes filled with sand and the turf being stood up from the brushing activity and heavy sand topdressing.