Fall Greens Aeration

Today our staff started our fall greens aeration program completing the practice green, greens 1-9 and 11-13. We will complete 10, 14-18 over the next couple of days.

Our process included the following:

• Mowed the Greens.
• Covered the greens with sand.
• Used our Verti-Drain Aerator with solid tines going about 8" deep.
• Applied a soil amendment product to the greens.
• Blew the sand into the holes using back pack blowers and our pull behind type blower.
• Brushed the green and rolled with our rollers.

A number of benefits occur from this operation:

• Heavy topdressing of sand smooths out the surfaces.
• The filled sand channels provide a oxygen filled area for roots to grow.
• The channels assist with wetting of drier areas and allow wet areas to dry out quicker.
• As mentioned above oxygen enters the green subgrade and assists in removing built up carbon dioxide.
• The sand also assists to dilute thatch which forms in the top 1" of the green.

Below is a bit more detail regarding the operation.

We mow the greens to remove growth.

The greens are covered in sand so we do not track across the aerated green with a heavy load of sand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCLf9z-EBEM

Aerator then starts its working placing solid tines into the green at a spacing of about 3" and to a depth of 8". Below is a video of this work.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ0xEew0b9I

We blow the sand into the holes to reduce tracking of our drag brush. We have a pretty simple drag which cannot move large amounts of sand into the holes.

Brushing greens after blowing in sand.