The staff spent the last 2 days venting greens. This is a process where we open the greens surfaces with a tine 5/16” thick. We use our tractor powered Verti-drain machine to perform this operation. There are a number of benefits that are created by this process.
Open surface to encourage oxygen to enter root zone and built up carbon dioxide to escape
Allows water to penetrate green surface and excessive water to evacuate through evaporation
Even though the channels are narrow, roots can grow in the channel due to a positive growing environment
During cooler times, green profile opened up can warm and during hot weather it can assist in cooling by allowing trapped heat to escape
We usually do this procedure every 3-4 weeks during the late spring and summer, 3-5 times per season is the norm based on weather and turf conditions. The holes usually disappear on the surface in a couple of days and create very little disruption in ball roll out. The holes in the profile can last a couple of weeks or more,
48 tines with spacing about 1” apart. Tines are about 7” long. Sometimes called pencil tines The hole is about the size of a pencil. We roll the greens after the process to smooth out the hole. We will roll them the next day to reduce the chances of scalping and then mow the third day.
Greens were vented today by the staff. We use our deep-tine machine with 5/16" venting tine which places a hole about every square inch or two in a little over 2 acres of greens/collars. Venting is performed to exchange good gas for bad. 02 oxygen good, CO2 carbon dioxide in higher levels bad if green surfaces are not opened up to allow the bad gas out.
The venting also helps improve water infiltration into drier areas and evacuation of water in wetter areas. Rooting is also improved with this process as is microbial activity which has a very positive effect on the plants. There is a battle going on in our root zone between harmful pathogens and those tiny creatures that help offset disease. Holes are not disruptive to ball roll for the most part and will closed in just a few days.
Bermuda eradication work is going well with our first spray that took place around July 23rd. Short video which stopped before I could complete my explanation(maybe my camera is telling me something). Larger Bermuda patches are pretty obvious from the red color that the Bermuda gives off as the chemical is taking effect. I was not trying to scare everyone off when I made the post regarding take your pictures now. I just knew that areas of the course would not look quite as green as they did but they still look pretty good when you see the effects the chemicals are making on the Bermuda. It will take more applications to get a pretty solid kill. The overwintering spray has a tendency to be the most effective.
I will make another application in the next couple of weeks and will complete the third application toward the end of September which will help us considerably for next season. Some of the Bermuda areas that are intermingled in the Zoysia are not as easy to locate but their are plenty of areas like this that we need to continue to hammer with these products to help push them out completely.
We do have some pretty serious issues with contamination in our intermediates in which some areas have little or no Zoysia. The left side of 10, right side of 5 and a few other areas where the Bermuda has moved from the rough into the fairway. This is coincidentally the areas which are sometimes shaded as well which discourages Zoysia and encourages Bermuda. Some of these areas will be treated with RoundUp and killed off completely and then sodded. I might do a couple of these just before dormancy this fall and then replace them in the spring with new sod. Looks like it is dead anyway when it goes into dormancy and will help us next spring get an early jump on sodding.
On Tuesday, E&E Enterprises whom we contract with to vent our greens with the Hydroject machines arrived on property and completed our 100K sq/ft of greens in about 4 hours. A very short video of a couple seconds posted below. Did not realize I had my camera set on time lapse at the time and they were gone when I decided to put the video on YouTube.
As usual, 4-5" in depth improving our greens in a number of ways with gas exchange, oxygen in, carbon dioxide that builds in soil out. Improved rooting with channels formed that are full of oxygen. We do not get a lot of new roots this time of year due to high soil temperatures, just checked this afternoon and at 2" of depth about 90 degrees. Also improves infiltration of water and drying of areas with excessive water.
Deep-tine aerated our Zoysia tees last week with an 1/2" tine to a depth of 4-5". As you know, we core aerated a couple of weeks ago so a 2nd aeration in less than a month. This should improve drainage on some tees which have large amounts of water running over them because they are at ground level and water drains across the tee. We hope to rebuild a number of these tees over the next few years to improve playability and turf quality.
Intend to get the rest of the bare spots in fairway areas covered with Zoysia in the next few days. We will also go after a few cool season rough spots near greens and bunkers with some fescue if we don't get too warm to start improving areas for the late summer and fall. I Intend to take our green height back to our normal height of cut for the weekend since our weather appears to be moderating. That will result in an actual height lowered by the thickness of 1 piece of standard copy paper.
Hope to see you out on the course over the next few weeks.
In an effort to keep our greens in the best shape possible health wise during the summer, we vent our greens every few weeks. Mr Webster describes to vent is to provide an outlet for air, gas and liquid Exactly the three things we are trying to accomplish when we vent our greens.
The first venting occurred around June 1st with a needle tining using our large tractor and verti-drain machine. The next two applications including today's are made by E&E Enterprises, a contracted service who provide three hydroject machines to our site. A row of 3000 psi streams of water are shot into our greens creating a near pencil sized hole that goes about 4-5" deep into the sand profile.
The greens were top dressed with sand before the venting, we then rolled them and brushed them after the hydrojecting was completed.
Below is an explanation of how air, gas and liquid are effected by this venting action taking place in our green profile.
The vent hole allows oxygen to enter the green sand profile improving the health of our roots and encouraging microbial activity.
CO2 gas/carbon dioxide can build up in the soil and the venting holes allow this trapped gas to exit.
The holes allow excess water to move through the profile quicker and at the same time if we were dry would allow moisture to enter the complete profile much easier. The vents also will help dry out our saturated sand profiles.
The vents also help in reducing the temperature of our sand profiles, especially when they are holding water. Moisture is a great conductor of heat and will artificially warm up the soil much quicker when it is saturated than if the soils are at average moisture levels. As the soil profile increases in temperatures over 80-85 degrees, root hairs begin to die which are the structures where most water and nutrients enter into the plant. The less root hairs functioning, the more stress a plant will experience.
E&E Enterprises was out this morning ahead of play hydrojecting our greens. Check out the video below for a little demo. Holes should heal in the next few days. We will be rolling the rest of the week in preparation for the St. Louis Women's District Golf Association Invitational being contested at the club Monday-Friday of next week. I was able to get a topdressing in at the end of the day just before dark which will improve ball roll as the sand settles down.
A short video explaining the venting/solid tining of our collars/approaches we did on Monday. Collars are the most drought prone turf on our course due to the fact that the greens which are right next to the collar receive small amounts of water so that the greens roll well and are healthy. The collars require more water and one way in helping with this issue is extra venting/solid tining of these surfaces. This will improve root development and will allow moisture to penetrate these areas with less restriction. Our hand watering efforts focus on these areas because they require more water than our overheads can apply without negatively effecting the greens.
