Hydrojecting Greens

At least once each summer, we contract with Tom Edgerton of E&E Enterprises to Hydroject our greens.  The hydroject is an aerator that uses a very highly pressurize bead of water to make a hole in the turf allowing for water and oxygen to exchange more freely in the green profile.  This is a very non disruptive process to the  putting surface and within a few days, you will not notice any holes in the surface of the greens.  The bead of water can penetrate up to about 5" in depth and will give our greens a few weeks of relief from the heat.  The hole pattern is about 2-3" spacing between holes.  We had planned this process after the Invitational because of the usual stresses from a 3 day tournament of 120 people as well as the potential for some of the warmest and most humid weather of the year.  Healthy root systems do not like highly saturated soils because they hold less oxygen and become very hot because of water's ability to conduct or hold onto heat.  All of the greens were completed by 10:30 except for 17 which was finished by 11:00 a.m.  Tom and his two sons each operated an aerator to help reduce the inconvenience to our members since the operation was performed on a open play day..

Stacey Edgerton, Tom's youngest son  walking across the practice green with his aerator.

The back of the machine and the hole pattern left by the aerator.   

Training New Staff Members

We are bringing in a few new staff members to round out our group for the season.  As a part of their training, the first work task that we teach them is how to walk mow greens.  The more people we have to do this job, the more flexibility we have in assigning work for the day.  It usually takes 3-5 days before an individual is mowing completely on their own without supervision.  We will then check in each day to see how they are doing for a few more days to make sure they are comfortable and are not picking up any improper habits.   

Tom Lewis working with Demarcus on the 7th green.

First use of walking greens mowers for the season

The staff(Asst Skip, Russ, Tom and Jason)  performed the first walking greens mowing of the season.  We are still in transition with our golf season staff which does not allow us to walk mow everyday.  We plan to be walk mowing full time by May 1st.  We will usually walk mow greens 5-6 times each week depending upon our topdressing program and weather conditions.  It takes 4 guys approximately 2 hour to perform this work each day. 

Tom working on #9 green.

Assistant Skip completing #16 green.

First mowings of the season

Last Friday we started to walk mow our greens. We normally use 3 to 4 units each day to complete this operation. This operation will take approximately 8-9 hours of labor a day depending upon the number of operators, the direction of mowing and if we are doing a clean up cut or circle cut.(Circle cut is when the mower will go around the perimeter of the green, tee or fairway that they are mowing and mow some of the grass which they cannot cut near the edge of the area.)

Assistant Mike Walerius is going after the 4th green last week.

We attempt to walk mow as often as we can based on what cultural practices we are doing to the greens on a particular day. Sometimes we will walk mow and use our riding unit and roll greens which help with smoothing the surface and can speed up the greens for a day to two days. During our topdressing operations, we will also use a riding unit. The riding unit reels are larger and stronger than the walking unit and can be ground many more times than a walking unit. We have a grinding unit at our shop which sharpens the reels. Regular sand applications cause the reels to become scarred and cut the turf irregularly. These irregularities create weakness in the plant which can lead to disease and or damaged turf. It can also affect the roll of the ball because the turf is inconsistently cut. With our heavy sand applications, we keep Harry White our mechanic very busy with setting up the cutting units on a daily basis.

Today, we started to mow some of our fairways. While carts are still on paths, I will not usually attempt to mow fairways but there were a number of fairways which were pretty long from their winter rest and were beginning to grow and they were dry enough to not cause damage. There are a number of fairways which we cannot mow right now including 1, 3, 12, and the lower part of 13. Since our zoysia is beginning to green up and grow, we will begin to allow carts off of paths as the fairways are dry enough to allow cart traffic.

Russ is putting the first cut on #2 fairway.

Yours truly is doing the perimeter cut around fairways and walk paths from tees to fairways. Not a lot of grass around the fairways but some cool season grass to mow through in the rough for the walk paths.