Fairway Aerating

Mother Nature has been in charge all season with wet conditions. With only a couple of dry days every so often combined with a heavy play schedule, we were finally able to get dry enough conditions to aerate our fairways today. A few pictures with a couple drone videos.
Our process included the following steps:

• Mowed Fairways to help reduce dew and the total amount of turf that would need to be mowed off after the process is completed
• Aerated the fairways pulling a solid core with a 1/2" tine about 3" deep
• Used our flail mower to help break up the cores after they dried for a few minutes. This mower has tags slightly larger than a dog tag that is attached to a rapidly spinning roller and literally flails apart the soil, thatch and grass plugs
• Used 2 metal drag mats to break up the remaining pieces of soil that built up
• Used our tractor blower and pull behind blower to remove grass turfts and excess soil
• Mowed the fairways again to clip off the turf pulled up and help break the soil that was still left on the fairway
• Sprayed the fairways with a soil penetrant and urea fertilizer to assist with the healing process and improve overall turf vigor

Aeration improve turf root structure, water penetration and drying of wetter areas, thatch reduction, gas exchange, and microbial activity which will improve over turf quality.

Jason pulling cores on 18, our last hole. Dodged a big bullet with the thunderstorm that hit around the I-64 area. Brought us in for about 45 minutes because of lightning.

 

Little drone view of Jason's work.

Tom using the flail mower with the before and after going over the area. Does a decent job.

 

Skip and Rollo dragging fairways to break up remaining cores and soil in preparation for the blowers to remove the remaining material into the rough.

 

Russ in a dust storm and he mows over the distrurbed turf on #1.

Sprayed fairways 1-5 and 7 with Urea and watered it in to improve turf vigor and color.
Will complete the other fairways as time allows over the next day or so. We included a soil penetrant in with the spray to assist water penetration over the next month as we begin to move into drier weather and the need for irrigation cycles.