Another Aerification Article

Yep, We aerified the greens again.  I was trying to think of a different way to communicate this topic because I'm sure that I've beaten it like a drum in past posts. 
My staff and I have aerified, cleaned off cores, picked up cores, sanded, fertilized twice, brushed, and watered all day long.  This was my 13th time aerifying the greens here at IHGC.  The 27th time for my career.  Over that time period it gets pretty difficult to change your methods.  However, I did change some of the chemical and fertilizer methods that I used to hold true to.  I won't bore you with the details, but the generalities are, something to make the greens more firm and more fertilizers of different varieties. 
Normally on Aerification day we are still plugging away (literally) at the greens until 5:30 or 6:00 PM and wouldn't finish topdressing and dragging until noon on day 2.  But, my staff was clocking out at 4 PM because everything had gone so smoothly.  Still not exactly sure where the reduction in time came from but I like it. 
I will be posting a video of the process on my youtube channel before too long so that you can better see the whole process in action. 
We punched 4.6 million holes in the greens.  That's just shy of 250,000 holes per green on average.

Fall Aerification

Not to sound hokey but "It's that time of year again".  Aerification.  We have completed the aerification of the greens and they have recovered for 2 weeks now and they are looking great.  I went on vacation for one week and they have almost healed completely.  I am terrifically thrilled at their progress this season.  We have had some great weather since poking holes, 80's in the day and 60's at night.  I have created another "flip book video" from my trail camera to observe the process on #4 for the last 2 weeks.  I was hoping to get a better comparison of aerified greens to healed greens, but that didn't translate as well as I had hoped.  most of the physical processes were recorded and are subtitled in the video.  some of the processed were missed such as fertilization and watering.  But, please remember that a lot of hard work goes into this process.
Here's the "Flip Book"

Aerification Video Link on YouTube

I hope that you can see the progress as well as I can.  Again this is still a new process of documenting these types of events, and I learn something new about it every time I try. 

Spring Aerification

We have just completed one of the toughest jobs of the year, Spring Aerification.  Normally its a job that most people don't see outside of course staff.  I decided to take a few videos to show some of the processes that we use.  This year I decided that we needed to aerify the greens twice.  We didn't really get a true aerification last fall.  Yes, we "poked holes", but we only used 1/4" tines and we did not add any sand as I didn't want to be too abrasive to the greens in their frail state last fall.  This spring we are using 5/8" tines on a 2 " spacing, and we are aerifying them in two directions.  The whole goal in this process is to create Macro pores.  Macro pores are porous spaces in the soil that allow for gas exchange, water movement and root growth.  As the season goes on the macro pores get compacted or occupied by roots or dead roots and they become micro pores.
The first two videos shows how early we get started during this process.  It is not uncommon to start the process at 4:00 AM.  We had to design a light kit for our equipment so that we can start early.

 

The next video is the process of aerifying the green in the daylight.  This video shows the back breaking labor that the staff goes through to remove the debris.

This video shows the process of applying the sand to the surface of the green.  This is a highly specific job.  Too little and the surface will not be smooth.  Too much and the grass may never see the light of day again.  

 

There are a few steps that I did not show Fertilizing, Dragging, Watering and Rolling.  3 of the 4 are really not worth seeing.  Unfortunately I was doing most of the dragging of the sand and it was hard to make a video of myself.

Hopefully this helps explain why we do this process every spring and fall and the hard work that goes into it.  I know that the playing conditions are not great for a couple of weeks after the process.  But just remember that Tom Watson shot his personal best low round on freshly aerified greens.