A Big Week Complete

The first full week of September is always a busy one for us.  Greens and approach aerification is carried out historically the Tuesday after Labor Day.  This is such an ideal time as temperatures are adequate for substantial bentgrass recovery, which we've seen.

Tuesday as stated, we aerified greens and approaches.  In fact, we got a head start with topdressing and deeptining on Monday night.  It was very important for us to get a head start with these processes otherwise our operation would have been a wait and go procedure rather than a constant flow.  In all it took us roughly 19 hours to complete aerification, topdressing, dragging, cleaning, rolling and fertilizing.  It's annually a very long day for the whole staff but I can't thank them enough for their hard work and helping get completed.  

As the week wraps up I couldn't be happier with the recovery if the greens and approaches, can hardly tell anything was done.  Really the only way to tell is by some visual sand and some slower green speeds.  Yesterday we did get our first cut on the greens with a second done today.  Heights are always raised at this time to protect equipment as sand can dull a mower quickly if not accounted for.  By middle of next week we should be back where we were and have an enjoyable rest of the fall.  

Included here are photos of all the processes:

Ramon and Santiago working together applying the topdressing sand.

Myself on the tractor running the deeptine.  We used 3/8"x6" spaced 3".

Moe following behind with thesmaller aerifier making more holes.  This machine was set with 3/8"x4.5" on 2" spacing.

Moe the man of multiple jobs working sand into the holes.

Multiple array of staff using blowers and shovels cleaning up excess sand.  Rollers then followed to help smooth out any imperfections from machinery traffic.

Hard to see but guys side by side applying nutrients to greens and approaches.  After this water was turned on to settle in sand and fertilizer.

Photo of greens surface the day of aerification following all practices carried out.

Surface yesterday after mowing in the afternoon.

Photo today after mowing with lowered height of cut from day before.

Guys continuing mowing the greens today.