Course Aeration: Day 1

Day 1 of our course aeration is in the books and the crew is heading out as I write to finish off the rest of the greens. We completed the entire aeration process for just over half the greens yesterday. Today we'll finish off the rest of the greens with plans to tackle fairways and approaches over the final two days. So far, so good!

Our process for greens aeration essentially goes like this:
-Core aerate (pull plugs) the greens to a depth of just over 4" (breaking through the previous compaction layer existing around 3.5")
-Use walkmowers with push bars to push the plugs to the collars
-Shovel plugs into carts for disposal (mostly to fill in ruts and potholes on our service roads)
-Verticut in two directions (helps remove even more thatch and cleans up the leftover plugs at the same time)
-Heavily topdress with sand
-Apply bentgrass seed and fertilizer
-Drag the sand with a brush in four directions to fill holes and smooth surface
-Lightly irrigate (to knock the sand down into the holes and relieve some of the stress we just put on the greens)

Here are a few pictures of the process from yesterday:

Pushing plugs on #10

Verticut clean-up on #17

Topdressing #2