Aeration Recovery & Troubled Greens

The course has now had one week to recover from aeration and I hope you are as pleased with the results as I am.  It just seems to get exponentially better each and every day.  We are back down to normal mowing heights throughout the course, including on the greens, and we started up our growth regulation program on greens again today which will improve greens speed and overall health by reducing shoot growth and promoting lateral growth to increase density.  It's amazing what a little sun, warmth, added fertility and irrigation pumps operating properly (see previous blog post) can do for turf!  The fairways that were experiencing some severe stress are now well on their way to full recovery.  With the current 14-day forecast looking great, we certainly expect the course to continue to improve on a daily basis.

There are a few areas out there that aren't improving as quickly as anticipated, such as the right side of #3 green and the front edge of #11 green.  The turf lost on #3 green is a result of irrigation heads not operating properly.  This green has never previously experienced turf loss like it has this season so we don't feel the need to do anything drastic at this point to remediate the affected area.  We overseeded the affected area during aeration last week and as you can see here we already have new turf establishing:

new seedlings growing in aeration holes

We are going to continue to aerate it with solid (non-coring) tines and overseed it an effort to reestablish the turf lost there.  If we are not pleased with what we are seeing in the coming weeks, we may be forced to go back to the drawing board and come up with another plan of attack.

The turf loss at the front of #11 green is a whole different ballgame.  This is a direct result of a lack of proper drainage.  Water "pools" in this low area due to the higher elevation of the green surround and the turf directly behind it.  It doesn't take much, as little as 2 minutes of irrigation, as seen here, for puddles to form:

puddles after only 2 minutes of irrigation

This puddling is a recipe for disaster and that's exactly what's happened.  #11 green is already our worst draining green due to the actual design of the green surround so lack of proper drainage (slit drainage like on #18 green) greatly compounds the already prevalent drainage issues.

Due to the lack of drainage on this green we will be taking a different approach to correcting the problem.  This coming Maintenance Monday, we will be removing the affected turf and excavating the subgrade to replace it with more appropriate material.  We will also be regrading this area the ensure it no longer puddles after minimal rainfall or irrigation.  This area will then be seeded with ryegrass and reestablished as the collar and first cut of rough.  Doing so will only force us to lose about a 4 feet or so of actual putting surface in that particular spot and will allow it to establish much quicker heading into the fall.  If you play this weekend, you'll notice the white dots indicating where the new front edge of the green will be.

Please understand that it will take time for both of these greens to fully recover, but this work is necessary to improve the overall health and playability of these areas.  Short-term pain for long-term gain.