Alternatives to Core Aerifications

Well folks, it is getting to be that time of year again, the temperatures are easing up, kids are back in school, and our golf games have had the summer to mature, you head to the course excited at the prospect of a quick nine holes and are shocked to find that the greens are full of holes and sand is everywhere! There have been plenty of threads and google searches wondering golf courses have to aerify, so I will try to spare everyone that, instead I want to showcase an alternative to core aerification.

This week the crew and several volunteers wrapped up an intensive week of aerification; greens, fairways, approaches, range tee, and collars. The week usually starts by marking every irrigation head, bunker spray/popups, valve box, yardage marker, drain cover, or any area that is not to be aerified, with those little colored flags you've all seen. That is done so that the tractor operators can see and they just pull up or go around those areas if they can. This process took an afternoon with the assistants and myself marking most of the course. All you do is ride along with our maps; one going up the left, center, and right then we double check and walk the greens loops. In all of my time doing this, I can count on two hands the number of heads that my guys or myself have hit (not counting contractors or outside help from nearby clubs).

This weeks dryject results...

Past years dryject and deep tine results...notice the long line of sand to the right of the blob from past years dryjects.

I have been big on a process known as dryject, this process has to be contracted out, and these guys kickass! This is all they do in the summer, they have the machines and come in knock it out, and go onto their next course. Real feast or famine if the weather isn't cooperating. These machines use high pressure water, instead of hollow tines to punch a hole. The neat part about this process is that the water as it moves through the machine creates suction will pull sand into the hole so it aerates and amends the profile nearly simultaneously.

In this picture you can see the green box at the top is the hopper, which holds the sand (which is special type of sand kiln dried and super fine, we used over 23 tons). It has to be dry to go through the machines otherwise it will clog up. On the right side you can see the hose connected to one of our quick couplers around the greens complex, this line feeds the machines to punch the holes. Those opaque tubes under the hopper move the sand and that silver box is what drives the water into the profile. The roller in the front is one of two, there is one behind the silver box, those simply roll the turf minimizing any disruptions.

The other process that we performed on our greens surfaces was what is known as a deep tine aerification. All this is, is solid 16 inch (I think, off the top of my head I don't remember.) pointed tine that will punch holes for us.

This is what it looks like before we have top dressed the greens, the unfilled holes are from the deep tine, and the smaller filled ones are from the dryject. I would not want to put on this green...yet.

The next step was to top dress the greens and brush the sand in. We use a brush that has two rolling brushes that are driven by the tire rotation. Each brush spins a different directions.

That was essentially the first day, of greens only. Fairways was far more monotonous and not as interesting, we just cored and top dressed fairways. Dryject on fairways isn't really cost efficient as its about 10 cents a square foot, and 23 acres of fairways (1,001,880 feet squared about 100k for the machines plus the cost of sand...not worth it unless really really needed it has been done though).

This is the finished product two days later...after multiple multiple multiple rolls haha. Other than aesthetics, you really would not noticed that we had beaten up the greens quite a bit, they rolled fine and were quite speedy towards the end of the week.

So that has been a little bit of insight into what a greenskeepers week entails, I hope you enjoy the product we produce as much as we like producing it for you!

Some photos of the process. This is core aeration, which we prefer to do as little as possible. Solid tines are the order of the day usually, Fairways spring and fall, greens once every two months.

The tractor drives 0.95mph at 1800-1900RPM to produce that perfect square pattern.

We torpedo 2-3 sprinklers per aeration, as it happens

I saw an ad in a magazine for a company that comes in, and does this. Do those pictures show that, or is that equipment that you have? Also, do you have any idea how much the contractors charge? Oops, I see that it was done by contractors.

> @caniac6 said:

> I saw an ad in a magazine for a company that comes in, and does this. Do those pictures show that, or is that equipment that you have? Also, do you have any idea how much the contractors charge? Oops, I see that it was done by contractors.

To my knowledge no course has their own dryject machines, although I could be wrong. There’s several regional contractor crews and it cost us just under 10k plus the cost of sand.

> @BNGL said:

> > @caniac6 said:

> > I saw an ad in a magazine for a company that comes in, and does this. Do those pictures show that, or is that equipment that you have? Also, do you have any idea how much the contractors charge? Oops, I see that it was done by contractors.

>

> To my knowledge no course has their own dryject machines, although I could be wrong. There’s several regional contractor crews and it cost us just under 10k plus the cost of sand.

I don't think our course would spend 10k for anything!

In September, my home course just pulled cores for the first time in over 5 years. It was greatly needed, and the greens have recovered and actually hold shots now.

> @HuskerFlyer said:

> In September, my home course just pulled cores for the first time in over 5 years. It was greatly needed, and the greens have recovered and actually hold shots now.

5 years!!! Now i don't know a great deal about turf management but i would consider it a miracle the greens have even survived that long without a coring. Can't imagine a good reason a respectable golf course would ignore it for that long...

BNGL, I know there are some Super’s out there who don’t pull cores any more. From what I have read, some deep tine and some solid tine. How much of that is soil/grass type dependent?