An Overview of Winter Aeration (Video)

[Bonvivant]

I found this quite interesting. Golfers don't see most of the stuff shown in the video. We only deal with the aftermath which happens to be one of the last parts of the process.

[phillyk]

Yeah there's a lot of different methods now too.  This fall, we first rolled the greens, then sanded, aerified using solid tines (so basically punches the sand into the ground), then double verticut (criss cross pattern to further punch sand into the ground), then dragged a mat to fill the holes in with remaining sand on the surface.  Soil temperatures were warm, so we fully recovered in a week and a half which is fast, at least around here.

If you are pulling cores, you would run the machine then sand and drag.  Verticutting is nice to in conjunction with aerifying but is not necessary.  Other methods include hydro aerifying and compressed aerify, basically using water or compressed air to blast the soil under the turf, which leaves minimal damage to surface.  As in, after a roll, you could play that afternoon and you would barely notice they did anything.  Those methods don't replace core aerifying, but are used on courses where the sand layer under the greens is thick (like a foot layer of sand). 

[jamo]

That was a cool video - I'd only ever seen the last part. 

[Bonvivant]

16 minutes ago, phillyk said:

Yeah there's a lot of different methods now too.  This fall, we first rolled the greens, then sanded, aerified using solid tines (so basically punches the sand into the ground), then double verticut (criss cross pattern to further punch sand into the ground), then dragged a mat to fill the holes in with remaining sand on the surface.  Soil temperatures were warm, so we fully recovered in a week and a half which is fast, at least around here.

If you are pulling cores, you would run the machine then sand and drag.  Verticutting is nice to in conjunction with aerifying but is not necessary.  Other methods include hydro aerifying and compressed aerify, basically using water or compressed air to blast the soil under the turf, which leaves minimal damage to surface.  As in, after a roll, you could play that afternoon and you would barely notice they did anything.  Those methods don't replace core aerifying, but are used on courses where the sand layer under the greens is thick (like a foot layer of sand). 

Thank you for the supplementary info. I know very little about course maintenance other than my duties as a golfer, so the insight is welcome. Cheers! 

[phillyk]

21 minutes ago, Bonvivant said:

Thank you for the supplementary info. I know very little about course maintenance other than my duties as a golfer, so the insight is welcome. Cheers! 

I definitely don't have all the answers, but I always enjoy talking with our superintendent about everything we do.

[billchao]

It took me way too long to figure out what ollo tining was...