On Tuesday we performed our fall aeration on the greens. The project went well and removed tons and
tons of nasty organic material from the greens.
As you can see in the pictures it is a full day of picking up these
plugs for the staff. Each greens has 6
or 7 loads of material that has to be loaded by hand and then we distribute
them around the course in the wooded areas so they can become grass. Since I arrived here in January, we have
removed 23% of the surface area of the greens and replaced them with good
sand. This will help a great deal with
surface drainage, as well as reducing thatch that causes the greens to be
puffy.
We are still in the middle of a drought here with hardly any
measurable rain in the last 6 weeks. We
continue to use the wells to supplement the water from our lakes. You will notice that some areas are still
browning out while other areas seem to stay wet. This is a factor of nightly irrigation and
the fact that some heads get both high dry areas and the low spots next to
them. These areas become obvious during
extended periods of no rainfall. The
greens tees and fairways all continue to look good while the areas under the
large oak trees are taking the worst of it.
Greens should be healed up in a couple of weeks and the aeration
will only be a distant memory.
