Aerification week was last week as many of you know but it did not go as we had hoped. The agronomy staff worked tirelessly on Monday and Tuesday to get the greens aerified and started on some the other projects due to the forecasted rainfall for Wednesday and Thursday. It was a good thing we did because both of those days were a complete wash with the course receiving 3.41" of rain during that time. It is hard to collect cores and spread sand in the rain, as we found out. One last day, Friday, to get the course back together and the staff knocked it out of the park once again to get us open on time Saturday morning.
I know the word "aerification" is a four letter word for most all golfers but it is simply one of those necessary evils in the golf world. The process removes old plant and thatch which have accumulated through time, relieves compaction of the soil, provides new points for gas exchange between the root system and the atmosphere, letting the toxic gases out and fresh oxygen in, and allows for new materials such as sand or other amendments to be added to the soil system. In a nutshell, you wouldn't dream of driving your car 100,000 miles without changing the oil and expecting it to survive. We are simply changing the oil.
Most of the aerification process was the same this year as last but we did change a few techniques and add a couple of practices so I thought a new video would help explain the process.
The agronomy staff put forth a Herculean effort last week to get everything done that we did. The rain we received really messed up our scheduled activities but we made it through. We did not get all the cultural practices we wanted done, such as core aerification of tees and topdressing of approaches, and will continue to work on the list over the next couple of weeks. The greens are done and are healing in nicely so we look forward to welcoming everyone back out to enjoy the course.
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