Needle tine venting, Fairway Aeration, Bermuda Eradication, Green Surround Renovation, and Fathers

Happy Father's Day. My Dad has been gone for 28 years now. A great deal of life has occurred since he went to be with our Lord. Follow the best I can with the lessons he taught me daily on how to live a full life. Sharing your time and treasure to lift up people was one trait he shared regularly. The last day of his life he spent a day in a small town trying to build a new Kiwanis Club that would share in the giving he believed in so much. Its an honor to be your son!

A busy couple of months on the golf course as we barge head first into summer. Allow me a few moments to summarize our work.

Our new zoysia tee and surround areas are trying to establish themselves and mature. Some a little better than others but we moved into some warm weather conditions that will help push it along. Teeing ground turf will be a little slower to respond because of its concentrated wear from teeing it up but we will continue to encourage its maturity. Will begin some sand topdressing to help smooth out the surfaces and help them fill in.

We sprayed the weed contamination on the surround on 5 and 6 where the turf is established. We also sprayed some bermuda encroachment in these areas as well. Speaking of bermuda eradication, we will begin our fairway applications in the next few days as weather allows. Please see the video below for further explanation.

6 Green surround continues to improve. Weed control applied and we've opened the right side bunkers for play.

Fairways and tees were aerated last. We still have a few tees left including the ranges, the approaches and close green surround zoysia areas. We will do this work as weather and time allows over the next week or two.

We also Vented the greens using a very thin 5/16 needle tine. We also double topdressed the greens over a 5 day period last week.

Why vent the greens? You just aerated them at the end of March twice. Venting is a process that is used because it reduces surface disturbance but improves performance of our root growing area in the plants. 

1. It improves gas exchange. Oxygen in and carbon dioxide out which can build up over time in the root zone.
2. Allows water to penetrate in hard to wet areas and can dry wet areas more quickly with air entering the subsurface.
3. The surface closes rather quickly but the small channels into the green surface going down 4-5" allow for roots to improve and thrive. Research has shown that these small pathways can be effective up to 3 weeks.
4. The lack of basic infrastructure in our greens(no drainage systems) places puts us at a disadvantage when it comes to dealing with adverse conditions including high heat and heavy moisture. This regular program allows our greens to combat some of the problems we face.
5. As you will see in the video below, there are 48 venting tines on the machine. Our greens average about 5,000 sq ft. Thats about 145,000 vents into each green assisting approximately 142,000,000 million bent grass and poa plants to survive. Approximately 1,500 plants per sq foot.

We have not been walking mowing our greens but plan on getting that started this week. We have 3 new staff members for the summer who we will begin to train along with our experienced group to incorporate this into our program for the summer to improve green conditioning.

Thanks for your time and I will try to get back to posting some additional work on the blog in the upcoming weeks ahead.