Wednesday, February 12, 2014
It is hard to imagine with this winter's weather but the 2014 growing season is getting ready to start here in central Virginia. The first week of March really kicks off the 2014 growing season for our team. The golf course will be closed March 3-7 and March 24-25 for aeration. The rest of March will be dedicated to fan installations, stump
grinding, drainage installation, irrigation installation, and above all
healing over from aeration.
Weather permitting, our team along
with Harmon Turf Services will perform three aggressive cultural
practices to our greens during the month of March.
1. Our team will Core aerate and backfill topdress with .55" holes on a 2" x 2" spacing. (March 3-5) (Aeration Blog Post)
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| This process that we perform every spring pulls a core from the green and the holes are backfilled with sand. |
2. Harmon Turf Services will be performing the
Drill and Fill with 1" holes on a 7.5" x 7.5" spacing. (March 6-7)
(Blog Post: "Showing the benefits of Drill and Fill with a Camera")
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| This is the same process that was performed last spring. |
3. Once this begins to heal, Harmon will be coming back to perform the
Graden work with 2 mm blades 1 1/4 inch deep and sand injection.
.jpg) |
| This is a
picture of the Graden with sand injection. The Graden cuts 2mm wide
channels into the greens surface and backfills it with fresh sand. This
removes a large amount of thatch, improves surface firmness, and
improves drainage. It does a great job of getting a large amount of
sand into the putting green surface. |
These three processes will combine to incorporate
over 120 tons of sand into and onto the greens. This will be a great
improvement for our greens and sets us up well for a successful 2014.
We have already seen great improvements from the drill and fill process
performed last fall. Much deeper rooting, firm surfaces, and better
drainage are a few of the noticeable differences. We will be drill and
filling this year in a different direction to minimize hitting the same
holes as last fall. We expect to have everything healed back in by mid to late
April, depending on weather. There will be a lot of disruption to the
putting surface so expect bumpy, sandy conditions. We perform these
processes early in the season to minimize disruption. Short term pain
will lead to long term gains this year. I will have a lot of pictures
and videos from the processes as they happen. We hope for good weather beginning next week and for the entire 2014 golfing season.
Stay safe this week,
Jordan Booth, CGCS
jbooth@willowoakscc.org
