2012 Fall aerification Damage -Updated

So you've seen the basic process that we adhere to 2 times each year during our aerification of the greens.  This process has proven to be excellent for us over the last several years and other than some minor tweaks to a few things here and there everything runs smoothly...until Fall 2012.  The large Sweeper machine that we use to clean the greens of the cores dug deeply into #3 green.  This has not happened to us during any of the previously aerifications.  We have been able to get the area fairly smooth and we will continue to work on it and plug it as needed.  We are still trying to determine why this happened this time.

  Here are a few pictures.

*when it happened again on #5 green(less severe) we parked the machine and picked up the cores by hand

I always take a bunch of pictures, but when I saw the machine buried into the green I felt too sick to grab my camera. 



This was taken the first time we laid back all of the pieces into the ground.




The following day

 


  


10 days after the damage occurred


 

15 days later




17 days later



18 days




21 days





2012 FALL aerification

Another aerification is now behind us and our focus has quickly shifted from survival (summer/stress month strategy) back to playability.  The holes have already started to heal in and it has only been 1 week.  This is very promising and with the 10 day forecast looking to be in our favor somewhat, they should heal in as scheduled.  Here are the step by step pictures of what we actually do on those two days. (I used some pics from this past Spring because some things were easier to see in those)





A simple explanation of the aerification cycle





The board is made out and ready to go when everyone arrives--the entire day is planned




Deep Drill company comes in and starts around daybreak.





Close-up of the Drill machine.





Then we aerify right after the drill crew finishes each green.







Our sweeper cleaning up the cores left by the Drillers and the Aerifiers




Then several guys strap on backpack blowers and blow the little bit of material that was left behind







Then we use water hoses to open up the holes so that we can get fertilizer and sand into them more effectively





Everything has been cleaned up and now it's time to add fertilizers that will fall into the holes





Filling the topdresser with sand out on the course rather than making many many trips back to sand pile



After covering the green with sand we drag this brush around to evenly disperse the sand

After dragging the sand around to smooth it out a few more times and using hand brooms to move the sand around and fill in EVERY hole completely; we will begin rolling the greens to get them smoothed back out.