Fall aeration

Fall aeration will be in progress as you read this. Few things are as beneficial to the turf grass as aeration. Few things are as frustrating to golfers as aeration. We try to minimize all disruption to play and finish our cultural practices as quickly as possible. Similar to spring aeration, the greens and tees will be aerated, however in the fall we add fairways into the mix.

The greens aeration is handled by our staff. We have one aerator for this process but it is one of the fastest machines on the market. We will do the front 9 greens on Monday and the back 9 will be open for play. On Tuesday, the opposite will take place. We will aerate the back 9 greens and the front 9 will be open for play. On the greens we will use a combination of solid and hollow tines. This will reduce the amount of cleanup required but will still put as many holes in the surface. Although the greens will be less than ideal for a time, aerating now will allow for ample healing time heading in to the fall season. As the day lengths get shorter and overnight temperatures drop, we will be able to push the greens more and make the putting surfaces very nice all fall. If we waited to aerate it would impact the play in September and October a great deal more. Tee aeration is also handled by our staff using the same machine we use on the greens. Once the greens are finished we jump straight to the tees.

The tee aeration will require much less cleanup work though because we will be using solid tines that do not pull a core on most of the tees. Also, all master plan tees constructed this year will not need to be aerated. This makes the aeration of the tees almost a non-issue to golfers.

The biggest difference between spring and fall aeration is with the Bermuda grass. In the spring the Bermuda grass is just breaking dormancy and aerating it at that time would not be productive. The grass would not be growing vigorously enough to handle the disturbance and the holes would be open for a long time. Therefore, aeration of the Bermuda grass is done in summer when the plants are growing at their highest rate.  This will allow some much needed oxygen to penetrate the soil and spark the Bermuda grass. Another positive aspect that we hope will have long term benefits is the relief of compaction that aeration will provide. There is a correlation between compaction and spring dead spot. Although there are several contributing factors, anything we can do to help alleviate this problem in the Bermuda grass will be valuable. For the fairways we will have a company come in and perform the aeration for us. Because of the acreage of fairways, man-power needed, and equipment required, it is not feasible for us to undertake this task. The fairways will be aerated on Tuesday. Any new sod on holes 3, 15, 17 will not be aerated at this time. This will help to speed the process and should allow for all fairways to be completed in one day.

Spring and fall aeration are about a week of disruption combined. The disturbance to play is minimal and the turf grass heals very quickly. So while it may seem as though “we are aerating again already?” the true impact on golfers and the playability of the course is far from intrusive.

 See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org