What Are You Doing?!?!?

Aerification. Aerifying. Aerating. Punching. Plugging. No matter what you call it, we are tearing things up. But it's a good thing. Twice a year we go through this process, and always we get asked what and why we are doing what we are doing.

There are many reasons why we do this, and it always seems to take place right when the greens are looking and playing their best.

(OK, let me clear something up. I know some of you are asking "what IS a GREEN?? It's all GREEN, right???" Well, yes, we HOPE it's all green, but a golf course GREEN is the area of shortly-mowed grass where the hole/flag is located. It's the "putting" area of the golf course.)

Golf course greens are the most important area on the entire golf course. At Fossil Trace we have 88 irrigated/maintained turf acres and only 3 of these acres are "greens". This is the most challenging area on the golf course to maintain and it is also the most critical. If you cannot maintain nice greens, people are not going to come back to play the golf course.

We mow our greens at sometimes less than .125". That is 1/8th of an inch. Try doing that at home! (Actually, DON'T try that at home--you wont have any grass left in your yard). When we have people set foot on a green for the first time often the immediate question is "is this grass REAL???". Yes, it's real.

Anyways, back to aerification. This process allows us to do several important things. First, it relieves compaction. With over 40,000 rounds of golf going through here, traffic is a huge factor and challenge at Fossil Trace and all that traffic plays to these 3 small acres of turf, creating soil compaction. Aerification relieves that.

2nd, it allows for oxygen to get to the roots of the grass plants. Like most all living things, grass needs oxygen to live, and oxygen is taken up by the roots. If the soil surface gets sealed off, oxygen cannot make its way down to the roots and the plant will die. Aerification opens up this surface.

3rd, aerification allows for removal of thatch build up. As plant leaf tissues die, they build up in the top layers of soil creating layers of dead organic matter that can prohibit the transfer of nutrients to the roots, create poor gas exchange, and also create a soft mat layer that is not conducive to golf ball roll.

There are several other factors as well, but this gives you an idea of why we do what we do. If we did not do the aerification process, the quality of our greens would deteriorate rapidly. The time it takes to heal is always dependent on the weather, and if we have warm temps then we can expect about two weeks for complete healing. Timing is always critical!

The process goes like this: We punch the holes, remove the plugs, topdress with sand, drag it in to fill the holes, and add our nutrient ammendments. As simple as that sounds, it takes a good 2-3 days for us to complete this process! Check out the following pics...