Aeration Dry Run

We've completed our aeration on the practice greens and we've got this falls major renovation work dialed in.  Because I rarely do the same renovation year to year, we have to tweak our settings accordingly.  Why do I change the practices year to year?  Our needs are always changing and maybe there is somebody doing something better that I feel would work well here. 

This year I used a new tool in the box to select the depth of aeration and that is a SPA report.   SPA stands for Soil Profile Assessment.  It evaluates the soil in 1" layers looking at both physical and chemical properties.  Most of our organic matter lies in the top 2"  and that's how deep we'll remove a core.  Why waste the kiln dried sand aerating any deeper? 

After we core aerate to a depth of two inches, we fertilize with calcium and organic fertilizer and then we apply sand to fill the holes.  We deep tine to a depth of 6" after that.  Those holes don't get filled with sand because we don't need them filled with sand.  It does however provide a channel for roots and water to go.  Once that is all done, we drag the green and call it good. 

Golfers will be impacted beginning July 30th.