If you have been on the golf course lately, it is obvious that Fall cultural practices are already underway. As it is with every year, following the conclusion of the club championship which was held over the weekend of the 6th and 7th of this month, we work very hard to capture whatever nice and dry weather we have left to complete practices that are targeted at removing thatch, reliving compaction and promoting gas exchange within the rootzone on all short-cut turf. The dry conditions also help the work move much faster for our staff and leaves all surfaces cleaner, maximizing our bang for the buck and giving you, the golfer better post-aeration playing conditions.
This year, we have chosen to remove thatch on our fairways using our verticutter, then following behind with our newly purchased deep tine aerator to loosen our soils. This is a method that we have not had the luxury of employing in past years as we did not have a deep tine aerator. However, now that we have both of these machines, we are able to get the best of both worlds, remove thatch up top where it has the most impact on ball-roll and use our deep tine aerator to do the rest: relieve compaction, create drainage channels and promote gas exchange which all lead to healthier, better performing playing surfaces. For more information and highlights on our deep-tine aerator, please view my previous post.
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| Results of Verticutting. |
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| Verticutting and blowing thatch off fairways. The large orange machine is the verticutter, a PTO- driven tractor attachment called the Wiedenmann Super 500. |
The areas that receive extremely concentrated amounts of traffic and compaction, namely our tees and approaches get a little bit more love which translates into a combination of the traditional core removal, verticutting and deep tining. Tees and approaches, no matter what the year will always need a little bit more TLC as they are very small patches of turf that are essentially bottlenecks for traffic from golfers and maintenance equipment. With that said, these areas need every advantage that we can give them through promoting ideal growing conditions which also leads to ideal playing conditions. Hence, we go a little bit more heavy-handed with the cultural practices on these areas. The cores removed from these areas will end up in all of the skybox footings that were dug out for the Boeing Classic on #14 and #18 this past Summer. Once all footings are filled and compacted, we will overseed and fertilize these areas to promote germination of new turf.
We will wrap up the month with greens aerification which is scheduled to take place on the North-end practice greens beginning Sunday evening the 28th and continuing all the way through Wednesday, October 1st. We will be testing our equipment and methods on the nursery and South-end practice greens in the next week or so to make sure we are ready to go at game-time. As with every year, there is a disclaimer that states we may need to move these dates up or back as it relates to the weather. One of the most important things we do when we aerify the greens is incorporate new sand into the profile through the holes we make with the aerifier. The only way that the sand is able to make it's way into those holes is if it is dry. That being said, if there is rain in the forecast, the sand will be too wet to sift down into the holes. We will be watching the 10 day weather forecast as the 28th-1st gets closer to see what Mother Nature has in store for those days. If the weather does not look good, we will need to make some adjustments to the dates in order to capture dry weather. Any adjustments to these dates will be communicated as soon as feasibly possible. Please keep your fingers crossed for good, sunny weather!!
Once we are able to complete all of these aforementioned fall cultural practices, the agronomy staff will be doing further work preparing the course for the winter which includes our annual mowing down of the fescue to promote plant health and control of unwanted species growing in the fescue areas. This will be something that you will see continue quite possibly all the way through the end of October and early November as we have almost 75 acres of the stuff and much of it is on very steep terrain, making it slow-going. We also plan to target a few areas in the fescue with a herbicide to keep the weeds from overtaking certain areas.
All in all, despite the busy summer, we have no plans to slow down this month as we have a lot of work ahead of us. With as successful of a season as we have had, it is important to remember that this kind of success does not come without a solid foundation of agronomic practices that set the stage for future success and as I have outlined, that is what we are now turning more of our attention to right now. Cheers, I hope all of you have enjoyed this summer as much as I have. See you around the course!
