Project Update

On August 29th, we began the yearly ritual of greens aerification. We started with the practice green because it is a good way to familiarize the workers that have not aerification before with how it works and what needs to be done. This year, we were also trying out a new core collector from Turf Pride. This collector is attached to the back of the aerifier and pulls the cores along. At the end of the pass when the aerifying head is raised, the cores are dumped into a pile at the edge of the green.

Here you can see the aerifier with the collector attached.

An action shot. Notice the piles of plugs in the background.

The collector at work.

In previous years, we had too shovel the plugs into the middle of the green and then pick them up. This collector will deposit the plugs on the edge of the green and allow us to use less manpower to get the greens aerified. It will hopefully also allow us to get them done faster. Here is a video from three years ago on #17 green.

After the cores are removed, we end up with 3/8 inch holes on 2 inch centers.

The collector came with two different collecting scoops. The first one ended up rising up over the plugs after a long pass and leaving cores on the green. After switching them out, the green was much cleaner.

First pass with the collector installed.

We will do the back 9 greens on the Tuesday after Labor Day and the front 9 on the next day, the 5th of September. With the small holes and some co-operation from mother nature, within 10 days, you should not even notice the holes.

In other news, some of the areas that did not survive the drought and heat of this summer are starting to sprout new grass.

Here is the fairway on #9. You can see the lines of bentgrass seedlings that we put down using the slit seeder.

This is in the rough between #4 and #5. The bluegrass/ryegrass mix is starting to sprout in the aerification holes.