Well, we've survived winter or have we. I bet if you asked our crew who spent 11 hours out on the course today that winter is still in full force but the promise of better weather is ahead. Oh it was a cold aerating the PG and greens 1-13 today. We anticipate completing greens 14-18 on Tuesday.
Most modern greens consist of 12” of sand, 4” of pea gravel and drain lines cut into the soil subsurface with 4” slitted drain pipes that help to evacuate excess water from the root zone. 18 of the 19 greens at Glen Echo are sand capped which means there is a 4-6” layer of sand on top of the soil layer with no drain tile to move excess water from the root zones.
The water that penetrates our greens evacuates in 2 ways. The first is moving down through the sand cap and meeting the soil layer. It will then flow with gravity out away into the green surround area. The second way our greens drain is through the holes we have placed in our greens over the last 20 years or more that penetrate into the soil layer. We then back fill the channel with sand which allows for additional water to move through the root profile and drain into the soil layer. We have placed thousands of holes into this soil layer to assist in removing excess water.
Below is a description of today's process with a couple videos and photos to show your our process.
The tines we use are 1/2” in diameter and penetrate to about 8” in depth.
Before we do the aeration work, we place a layer of sand on the green surface. This is done ahead of time to reduce the potential heaving of the green surface. If you aerated and then pulled a machine across the surface with a load of sand it would put some waves in the green surface.
We put approximately 1500-2000 pounds of sand per green depending upon the size.
We apply a micro nutrient granular product to our greens and then move sand into the holes with a pull behind blower and backpack blowers.
We then drag the greens with a brush, roll them and fertilize with an organic chicken based fertilizer. The greens are then rolled and water is applied to begin to dissolve the fertilizer and settle the sand.
We have a second aeration planned for next week which is contracted out. I will explain this process next week but it’s used in place of the common proactive that is called core aeration.
Our aeration process does the following for our greens:- Stimulates top and root growth
- Sand assists in smoothing the surfaces and provides a fresh channel of sand for drainage and root growth.
- Penetrates into the soil layer assisting in drainage for our greens.
- Encourage microbial activity as the weather warms which assists in reducing thatch. The sand also assists in diluting thatch.
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