Tee aeration and mowing

Our cool season tees being deep tine aerified on Thursday 3-27-09. The cool season signifies that the turf is at its full strength during the cooler seasons of the year. Varieties include bluegrass, poa, rye and bentgrass. The tees that were included in this work were on holes #1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 11, and 17. Russ is operating the equipment and Harry is checking out the plug drag which is on the back of the unit. We are going about 3-4" in depth and pulled a core like the greens. We will do a solid tine aerification on these tees in the next month or so at a 4-6" depth. The zoysia tees will be aerified when they are more actively growing in May, June and July.















The picture above demonstrates the plug drag in action. The tee is aerified and as the machine moves across the tee, the plugs are pulled along behind the machine by the attached drag. Once the tee is completed, the plugs aer scooped up with shovels at the end of the tee and are hauled away. We placed most of this material in ruts and washouts in various areas of the course.

The tees were then sanded with about 1/3 as much sand as we placed on the greens. We utilized the brush mechanism on the back of the topdresser which allowed us to place a narrow band of sand on the tee surface. The spinning type mechanism would have thrown the sand off of the tees which are more narrow in width. We are attempting to get sand onto and into the tees
for the following reasons:

• Keep the surface of tee slightly drier which helps with playability, mowing and potential disease reduction.
• Reduce earthworm castings.(Earthworms do not like the abrasive nature of the sand we use. They will moved to a more friendly site)
• Easier to place tee into the ground in and sandy soil then just soil.

Tees need to have sand added to them on a regular basis to assist in the overall health of the turf. Once they were sanded, a metal drag was pulled onto them by a cart which helped to break up some of the remaining plugs and move the sand down into the profile of the turf. The tees were mowed and then fertilized with a 1/2" of Nitrogen in which 75% was of a poly coated material that will last about 8 weeks. Additional amounts of fertilizer will be applied every month to help with turf health and recovery from play.

Skip on the rough mower Thursday out ahead of the spray rig which was being operated by Mike. The rough is beginning to grow and I wanted to clean the close in areas up for a pre-emergent and weed killer spray which Mike was putting out in the rough. The pre-emergent will help prevent crabgrass and goosegrass and the weed killer will kill broad leaf weeds such as knotweed, dandelions and other less desirable species.