Deep Tine Aeration

This week we are performing a deep aeration which utilizes tines that are 5/16" diameter by 10" long. The eventual hole is 8" deep and they are spaced in a 4"x2" pattern. This aeration will allow for better flushing of accumulated sodium and will also assist in breaking up a small pan layer that we have.  A pan layer is a layer that has formed just below typical aeration depth which is approximately 3-4" below the surface.   The pan layer can accumulate sodium and bicarbonates and prevents a good flushing.

You can use this cultivation experience as practice for the mental side of your game. While you will see holes, there is virtually no disturbance of ball roll as they are cut and rolled following.

It's Been a While

April 25th of 2014 was the last time we saw rain this year... until today!  While I wouldn't qualify it a rain event per se, it is nonetheless moisture falling from the sky and causing the pavement to smoke in relief.  We probably won't get anything measurable from this, but we may be able to turn the sprinklers off for a day.

Since April 25th, we have been doing a lot of items to best manage this drought.  The highlights are continually punching/ aerating, lots of lime and more to come, continual irrigation audits, and changes to the irrigation programming.

We have solid tined fairways 3 times this summer while roughs and tees have been done twice now.  All three surfaces are getting core aerated as we speak and will be followed up by another application of lime.  The holes allow for better water penetration and the lime (calcium) is helping with sodium which has risen to 12% of the base saturation on fairways.  We were at 9% sodium in May and less than 5% is desirable.

Our irrigation man, Rolando, has been rocking with nozzle adjustments and pressure adjustments which has alleviated 75% of the nozzle issues we've had on the course.  Along with his help, we have made changes to the irrigation programming that have helped maximize efficiency.  Some of those changes were changing the flow set-point from 1800 gpm to 1300 gpm, only allowing 2 sprinklers to run per irrigation program at one time, and changing the priorities on the programs.

With the later, Tom Jackson of Sierra Pacific/ Rainbird has always stressed this and I never put much into it.  The theory is that by changing the sprinklers start time priority, the sprinkler will run at different times every night and the odds of the sprinkler running while windy every night are reduced. I still doesn't make sense to me that it has that big of an impact, but we are seeing the results and I can make sense of that.  

It really has been an exciting year learning how to best manage the drought and we have learned a lot that will have forever lasting impacts to how we manage water going into any irrigation season; drought or no drought.

www.save20gallons.org
www.valleywater.org

  

Micromanaging water

One of the problems that is not realized during this extended dry period is the fact that the winter rains haven't come and flushed out all of the salts that accumulated in the soil after a season of irrigation. This flushing allows our bare turf areas that turned because of salt stress to recover.  To give a numerical number to describe the problem, our fairway soils this time last year had an average sodium percentage of 2.25ppm.  This year the average sodium percentage is 8ppm.  With this much sodium in the soil, despite the soil profile being saturated, the plant will take up the sodium causing something called wet wilt.  

To begin to address the problem, I need to knock down the sodium. I have taken the steps of applying both gypsum and potassium sulfate to the fairways.  The gypsum will help remove some of the sodium in the soil and because  potassium is easier for the plant to uptake than the sodium, we should see (we have seen) a positive improvement.  

With the sodium problem being addressed, we are now beginning to aerate and fill in voids of turf that were salt stressed last year.  This is a difficult task in the sense that it is hard to keep such small areas of turf moist throughout the day and using the sprinklers is an incredibly inefficient use of our water.   

To solve this problem, I turned to a page from my first year in turf back home in Michigan and that was to fill up the sprayer and go water the small spots.  While it eats up labor hours, 100% of the water is going where we need it and it is actually  faster than pulling a hose down the fairway like you see us do for dry spots.