Late Summer Aeration

It's been quite some time since I last found time to update our blog, but this week starts the end-of-season maintenance practices that will span the next few months and updates here I know will be much appreciated.

Over the last two days, we completed our late-summer aeration of the greens. We did things a little differently this time, trying to find the best balance between efficiency, speed of recovery, achieving desired agronomic goals and minimal disruption to golfers. In all these aspects I feel we were very successful.

Using two newer-technology ProCore aerators, we were able to complete the full aeration process to all greens in 10 hours. Our new method involved putting down the topdressing sand first, aerating with hollow tines over the sand, applying fertilizers and amendments, dragging all the dried material to fill the holes, blowing off the removed and unwanted thatch, and finally watering it all in. Using this method eliminated the laborious task of having to manually remove all the plugs before sanding, which not only added time and alot of extra traffic to the green, but generated alot of waste material that builds up in the green waste area over time. By dragging the plugs, we knocked off alot of the existing sand, rich with organic material and fertilizers already existing in the green, to be mixed back in with new sand, leaving only the dry, problematic thatch material at the surface to be easily blown off into the surrounds to later be chopped up by mowers.

Aerating with 3/8" hollow tines over topdressing sand

Dragging in sand and plugs

 We also used a smaller size tine (3/8" as opposed to 1/2") to aid in speed of recovery. The beauty of it is that even though we used a smaller tine, we condensed the spacing such that we were able to remove the same amount of thatch as the larger tines. As a superintendent mentor of mine once told me: "A million small holes heals just as fast a dozen small holes; it's not the quantity, it's the size of the area that needs to be grown back over that determines healing time."

It always helps to take a step back and really think about this idea, along with many others, to determine WHY to aerate and also HOW. Doing practices such as these "just because everyone does it" is unwise and often unnecessary. There should always be a stated and desired goal to intense maintenance practices. In this case, ours is multi-fold: relieve compaction from summer traffic, provide an opening to allow nutrients, air and water to move deeper into the soil profile and removal of thatch near the surface that inhibits water penetration, facilitates optimum disease conditions and softens the receptiveness of the surface. Note that the first two goals can be achieved with solid tines and very little disruption. The messiness of pulling a core coupled with alot of sand is for the removal and dilution of thatch, which we currently have a good amount of. The long term goal is to reduce thatch to manageable levels then implement practices that constantly dilute and breakdown thatch without major aeration to hopefully one day move away from major disruptions, like these types of aerations, in favor of more numerous and minor disruptions, like bi-weekly verticutting and light topdressing coupled with solid tine aerations.

In any case, our new methods and practices will lend to overall better conditions, both long term and short term, and the greens should be back in shape faster than ever. A sneak preview of the speed of recovery can be found by watching the driving range practice green, which was aerated last Thursday and will show recovery results five days ahead of the rest of the course. So as soon as you think the practice green is good, the course will be the same 5 days later.

Driving range practice green - 5 days into recovery



The Irrigation "Dance"

As we are officially in the middle of summer now and true heat has finally found us, an update on summer stress, certain eyesore areas and the role irrigation plays in both is due.

As much as we would love to say that all the work we've done over last fall and the winter to improve plant health, soil conditions and the irrigation system would guarantee nothing but green grass, the truth is that the road to recovery from the woes of last summer is a long-term process. We've definitely seen some major improvement, in particular on the holes that received extra attention and topdressing this spring, like #3, 4 and 12. But we still have areas that are giving us headaches, for a variety of reasons.

In addressing the irrigation issues discovered this winter, part of the process was to completely reprogram the irrigation system. Doing so essentially sets all sprinklers to a uniform base percentage of 100%. However, we all know that sprinklers in the shade probably don't need 100% irrigation. Likewise, areas on the tops of hills or on south-facing slopes may need more then 100%.

So in firing up the irrigation system for the summer, these are the areas we are slowing finding. Areas where there's either too much irrigation, or not enough. We have the ability to adjust every sprinkler out there, but finding the right combination of percentages for any given area can be a challenge. In trying to dry out a wet area, we can adjust down too much, and get too dry. And vice versa. So we "dance the dance" with the irrigation system. But, in time, we find that balance. Getting there sometimes doesn't look pretty, but once we're there, we're set. And once the affected grass recovers, we shouldn't have to worry about those spots again, and we move on to others. Over the long-term, we eventually get the entire course balanced out such that when we need to, for tournaments in particular, we can dry down everything equally, to make it firm and fast. Then we can rewet everything uniformally as well for a fast recovery. This is the end goal, and we are on our way there, albeit little by little.

Another "good news, bad news" fact to point out is: bad news = some grass is very dry, brown and some of it beyond recovery (which is currently being reseeded) and doesn't look very pretty; good news = the majority of the grass looking this way is Poa annua, the grass we least desire to see and maintain. So while we'd prefer not to see overly dried out areas, we are effectively separating the strong from the weak; the Poa from the ryegrass. And the picture below is a perfect example of that:

You can easily see both the survival/drought strength of the ryegrass, as that is pretty much the only green grass in the picture, as well as the benefits of the aeration we've been continuously performing, as those are the regularly spaced spots the ryegrass is happily growing in. So as we continue to aerate and continue to seed in ryegrass, these areas of strong, healthy turf will become more dense, with better coverage and eventually the majority of the Poa will be gone. Again, long term, but a nice end result to dream about. Our commitment to this goal is unwavering, and we again thank you for your commitment and support as well.

Driving Range Putting Green

Many who've played Winchester recently have probably noticed that the driving range putting green has suffered a bit of a setback. Due to an electrical malfunction with the irrigation in this area, a portion of the green didn't receive water for a prolonged period of time and we've had some turf loss as a result.

However, the irrigation issue has been addressed and the green is on it's way back to recovery. This past Tuesday we verticut to remove the dried out turf, needletined to create holes for bentgrass seed, overseeded and lightly topdressed the damaged area. With daily light irrigation and with our golfers help in avoiding trafficking this portion of the green, we hope to see significant regrowth within the next few weeks.

We've made great strides at correcting and improving irrigation issues throughout the course this year, and work will continue to ensure that mishaps such as this don't become a recurring event.

Summer Aeration

I've slacked on posting updates and will have to play catch up soon, but for now we'll touch on the present. While the course is holding up well right now, even through the recent two day heat wave, we can't forget our ultimate goal: to build a stronger, healthier turf. A big part of this is the continued effort to increase rooting mass and depth. The best way to do this is to continue to make aeration holes. These holes allow water to penetrate deeper and get oxygen to the roots. Both these stimulants encourage the roots to dive deep in the holes. The deeper the roots, the more aggressive we can be in the future with major aerations, cultivation practices, pushing for faster greens speeds and drying the greens down without fear of losing grass.

Here's the machine we used yesterday to needletine aerate the entire back 9. You can see how thin, but long, the tines are.

Here's how the green looks immediately following a pass made by the machine. It's hard to tell in the photo, but that flag sits about 4 1/2" deep in the aeration hole.

We immediately follow the aeration with a quick roll of the green and the surface looks like above. The holes are still there, but hardly noticeable, with virtually no disruption to the playability of the surface.

The front 9 will be completed within the next week and we will continue to use practices such as these to help improve the growth and health of the greens through the summer. I look forward to the day we only have to water the greens once a week because the roots are so deep, and we can keep the surface firmer and faster.

Course Aeration Wrap Up

There has definitely been some delay since my last post, but it's not for lack of activity. Aeration was a challenge, but a rewarding one. The course has made alot of progress in recovery over the last week, and I wanted to share some pictures to confirm that fact: here's #17 green in time lapse form, both in wide shot and close up:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 5

Day 14

Day 1

Day 2

Day 5

Day 14

So though the greens may still be mostly slow, and a bit bumpy, the recovery is over 90% complete. And it might even be a bit farther along if it weren't for the past three sub-60 degree days and 2.3" of rain. But the sun is back, the temps are climbing, and we are beginning to work on speed and perfect smoothness in preparation for our Women's and Men's Invitationals coming up. The pain of aeration is over, let the good golfing season commence!



Course Aeration: Day 3

The end is in sight! Only one more day of course closure left for aeration, and I'm happy to say we've been largely successful. Yesterday, we finished aerating, overseeding and topdressing all of the approaches:

Dragging in approach topdressing

We made some progress on the fairways as well, though we only got through one and a half holes before all our tines were destroyed. The soil below 2" is particularly unforgiving on our equipment and we're constantly making adjustments. We'll continue pushing our way through pulling plugs on at least the four holes that we will be topdressing, and may switch to a less disruptive aeration (solid tines) in order to continue work in between play once we open back up.

Winchester soil vs. heavy duty tines

We also finished cleaning up the second half of the greens that were completed on Day 2 and have begun double rolling them to smooth the surface back out. The greens will remain a bit sandy and slow as we open for play this weekend, but will get gradually better through next week. With this ideal recovery weather we're getting, the impact of aeration should be minimal after 2 weeks and the greens should be excellent shape for the Sugar Pine tournament at the end of the month.

Course Aeration: Day 2

Another successful day of course aeration complete. The second half of the greens were completed yesterday. We also completed some follow up clean-up on the greens that were completed yesterday, by blowing the excess sand across and off the green. This helps top of any holes that were still lacking sand as well as provide a cleaner surface, exposing more leaf tissue to increase photosynthesis and recovery.

#17 after Day 1

#17 after Day 2

Green surface after Day 2

We also aerated and overseeded the lower driving range tees, and aerated half of the approaches.

Approach aeration

Today we focus on finishing aeration of the approaches as well as seeding them with more ryegrass and topdressing. We also begin aerating fairways today, starting with the holes we will also be topdressing (our worst performing in terms of drainage, playability and plant health): #3, 4, 8 and 12. Still alot of work to be done, but we're making steady progress!