Venting Greens

Wednesday we "vented" the greens, which is another way of saying we used a small solid tine aerification to give the greens a little mid-summer breather. At this point in the season our native soil push-up greens tend to get a little "tired" and stressed with the drought season in combination with all of the traffic they receive. By venting the greens we are able to provide much needed oxygen to the root zone which makes the grass plant healthier, while minimizing the impact on the putting conditions. The process included sand top dressing, solid tine arefication with 1/4" tines, brushing, rolling, and watering in that order. When we were finished with a green you could barely tell anything had been done.

Irrigation Adjustments

We are now just over a year removed from the completion of a completely new irrigation system. We've made it through most of the major "tweaking" that goes along with the installation of a new system, which allows us to get much more detailed in the adjustments that we are making. Starting tomorrow we will be taking the makeshift tool shown in the picture above and begin measuring the degree arc of every part circle sprinkler head on the golf course, and then inputting those numbers into our central irrigation database.

Having more accurate data in the computer instead of just labeling every head as 180 degrees will give us the ability to know to a much greater extent how much water is actually going out on the course. It will also help us maintain much better irrigation uniformity, especially on and around the greens, creating more consistency throughout the course.