Franklin County Country Club Golf Course Management: Fall Aerification

Another aerification has come and gone. I would like to thank my crew for a job well done. This is not a popular cultural practice but is necessary to have good quality greens. We actually started this job 3 weeks out from our actual aerification date. That's when we started vertcutting greens. Verticut helps eliminate grain in the turf surface. Bentgrass spreads by stolens. Stolens are horizontal growth that grows above the ground surface. If you get too much horizontal growth it is called grain. You want upright growth for good putting surface. Verticutting cuts these horizontal growing stems and leaves and pulls the material out. The turf responses by sending up a new leaf were the stem or leaf is cut. The new leaf grows straight up which eliminates or reduces the amount of grain giving you true rolling putt. We verticutted 3 times in 3 different direction before we aerified our greens.

Aerification is a labor intensive practice. It takes everyone on our crew to get this job done quickly and efficiently. Aerification does 2 major things for us. 1. Bentgrass is a big thatch producer. Thatch is material just above the soil surface that is composed of dead and dying leaves crowns and roots. All grasses produce thatch, a little is good too much is bad. Too much thatch can cause hydrophobic soils, give pathogens a place to live, cause the greens to get spongy or soft which gives you poor ball roll and a green not able to accept a proper hit golf shot. 2. Just as the name implies air. Turfgrass receives air from the root system. By punching holes into the root zone of the turf this give a channel for air and water to move. We top dress our greens with sand and brush it into the holes. This fills the aeration holes and keeps the channel open to prolong the air movement into the root zone. In about 7 to 10 days the holes fill in. Aerification rejuvenates the greens they will respond with a flush of growth.

I know for a short time greens are a little rough and unsightly but in about 2 weeks you will hardly notice what has taken place. Below are some pictures of the process.

Dan Verticutting #7 green

Notice the lines verticut on right. It pull up a lot of grass

Aerating #18 green

This is our core collector Rob made with parts in shop. This pulls all cores to one end of the green. We then shovel cores into cart. This saved the staff 3 hours each day of pushing cores off greens before we could pick them up.