Aeration and Weather

There are many reasons for the aeration of greens.  Many articles on it's importance have been written and the practice is one of the most discussed among golfers.  Needless to say it is vital to the health of greens and if we were in charge it would be a practice done even more frequently.  But the point of this discussion is the weather impact on aeration and how it effects playability.  To gain a better understanding I will outline our procedures:

1.  Greens are mowed, since we do not mow for several days afterward to reduce the impact of damaging mowers and grass from the abrasive nature of sand.

2.  Aerifier is run across greens,  pulling cores and using shovels to remove them off greens.  We use a hollow tine with an inside diameter of 0.38".  We effectively pull over 240,000 cores on an average green.  This seems like a lot but actually only affect 4.72% of the surface area on the green.   Of course they are all in the way between your ball and the cup!

3.  Sand is then applied across the green. We will use somewhere between 25-40 tons of sand in this process. The sand must be very dry, if not we can severely injure the green while working with the wet sand.  It is difficult to fill that many holes without the sand bridging across the top,  which happens when using less than dry sand.  It gives the appearance of a filled hole until the first rain, then the sand falls to the bottom.  Our goal is to fill more than 85% of the holes to be effective during this large tine aeration at the edges of the season.  Dry weather, dry greens and low humidity are the keys to helping this process be successful!

4.  We next send a full brigade of staff to blow off excess sand or apply smaller amount to fill areas.  After this we apply any fertilizer or minerals that are needed and water in.

5.  We attempt to roll the green but we need to wait until the surface is dry so as to not pick up the sand and products we just applied.  This is why we wait for several days before we begin mowing to allow all this to settle.

6.  Pray for good weather to allow the healing to begin!