Course Update

I am sure everyone saw the dead turf on #9 green.  Our Toro triplex greens mower blew a hydraulic line on its third pass of the morning.  Having our employees trained, paid off big time on this incident.  Mike, one of our long time seasonal employees caught the leak quickly in the dark and backed up off the green instead of making a turn on the green to get off.  He then quickly drove thru the rough around the green and parked in the native grass.  We watched the spot (35 feet) for the next two weeks hoping the turf would survive.  On a slow morning, we stripped the dead spot as deep as the sod cutter could go and replaced the strip with the turf from our nursery.  By the spring, you will not even notice we had been there!

Greens aerification went... and went...and finally we finished 5 days later.  We used 1/2" quad tines at a 1x1x1 inch spacing.  There were 60 holes per square foot and by the end we punched roughly 8.4 million holes and used roughly 90 Tons of USGA sand.  We missed the spring aerification due to snow, so we needed to catch back up on the removal of the thatch.  The week we decided to punch, mother nature wanted to throw us a curve ball like she had done all summer. 
Monday: I started aerifying in the dark knowing what the weather was going to do.  The sun stayed behind the clouds, the wind was no existent (I only wish for the wind on greens aerification days) and we had the occasions rain shower.  We were able to aerify and pick up the plugs on greens 10 thru 18.  Unfortunately we were only able to drag in the sand on 10-15.  We need the sun and wind to help dry out the sand so we can drag it into the holes.
Tuesday: We called off our guys because the high for the day was to be 42 degrees with possible snow/rain.  We dragged in the sand on 16-18
Wednesday: We started 3 hours late due to frost/ice from yesterday evenings rain.  We finished aerifying and picking up plugs late in the evening but were only able to to drag in the sand on holes 1 thru 6.  This was the last day of the seasonal help and I think they were glad to be done.  
Thursday: We finished dragging in the sand on the last few holes and we continued to roll the greens with the True-Surface Vibratory rollers.
Friday: We rolled all the greens 3x to help with the smoothness
We put the first cut on the greens on the weekend with the sand reels.  We mowed all the greens 2 times with the sand reels and rolled everyday.  7 days later after the aerification date, we mowed the greens with the normal greens mower.  We rolled everyday the roller until it was picked up, since it was a demo.  20 days later, the greens are still healing.  Since we go so late in the year, the healing process is slow due to the average soil temps in the high 30's. We are still hoping the greens will heal up before the first true snow storm.  If not, we will baby them thru the winter so we can start off on the right foot in the spring.