This past week we ran a demonstration of the Graden verticutter on the bar putting green. Where a traditional verticutter tickles the interface between soil and plant tissue, the Graden blows through that interface to a depth of up to 1 inch. In theory it does everything I want it to. We have a mild build up of thatch in the top 1" which gets removed and then sand is backfilled into the groove that was made from thatch removal and dilutes the existing thatch layer.
It did what it's advertised to do for sure. We removed a little over a yard of material at a 1/2" depth and put in a little more than a yard of topdressing sand. The real test is in how it heels and what the players think of it. It is a lot of work having never done it before, but if it yields the results that I hope it does than it would be worth the effort.
