Aeration, Round 2

Our fall aeration of the greens and approaches took place on monday and tuesday of this week, and although the weather was a little chilly, things went pretty well.  We rented Fargo Country Club's aerator again this fall like we did in the spring, although instead of solid tining the greens and just pulling cores out of the approaches, this time we pulled cores out of everything. 

With 5/8" tines on 2"x2" spacing, this was a pretty aggressive core aeration.  We are still playing catch up trying to eliminate some of the excess organic matter that was allowed to accumlate in the greens during the last......lots of years.  We again filled the holes using a local USGA spec sand that was blended 10% with a peat material.  If you remember my blog post from this spring about aeration, I made a comment in there about the benefits of using a sand blended with peat (enhanced water and fertilizer retention, as well as increased microbial activity, which will help in breaking down the organic matter underneath the surface of the green.)

While we were at it, we also solid tined our new tee boxes and heavily topdressed them as well.  We also pulled cores and topdressed a number of different tees that I foresee us keeping and not having to rebuild (10 and 18 main tee boxes, as well as a variety of the additional black, white, and red tees).  Doing this will help those tees start to firm up a little, and topdressing with a heavy amount of sand, when broomed around, will help to level them out by filling in the low spots as well.

All told, between the greens, collars, approaches, and tee boxes, we poked approximately 5,170,000 holes in the turf and used 182,000 lbs (91 tons) of sand to fill all of them. 

Off to a good start on the putting green

Procore 648 in action

Beautiful, just beautiful

Core cleanup was a breeze with the pull behind box scraper we resurrected

The weather turned a little dicey by the end of the day, these aren't exactly
the type of clouds that help sand dry so it can be broomed in....

Using the blower to do the final sand cleanup and to fill the
remaining holes after topdressing

Thanks also to Gunner for the use of this hog for the process.  We used
this 3,000 lb roller to smash down some of the "dams" that had built up in
the collars on the edges of some of the greens.  The front edge of
8 and 18 greens are a great example of this (years of hosing silt off
the front of the greens after a flood has caused most of these.)