Fairway Aeration Schedule Spring 2017

Fairway Core Aeration Progressing As Originally Planned

Yesterday on Monday 3/27/17, even though it was much wetter then ideal for fairway aeration we rolled the dice and went ahead and got started on a few fairways on the back nine. The new Toro ProCore FW Aerator we purchased a few years ago does a great job even when conditions are a little wet, but as we have covered before the trick with this process is getting dry enough conditions to effectively remove the extracted cores. 

GCM Staff  aerating #18 FW Monday morning after 1/4" of rain the previous evening
 with the Toro ProCore FW aerator

We did receive over 2" of rain last week and 1/4" of rain on Sunday night. This does make conditions a little iffy for aeration of 25 acres of fairways. However we were closed on Monday and it is pretty hard to let an opportunity like that go to waste, so we went ahead and got started. We ended up removing cores with a piece of equipment called a Core Harvester which is the machine we use to remove cores on the greens. I've used the Core Harvester on fairways before at a previous property but never here at GBGC. The positives of using the Core Harvester for cores on a Fairways is you don't have to let cores dry and can start removing them immediately after extraction. The negatives are the machine is very slow and picking up fairway cores are very hard on the machine itself.

Removing FW cores with the Core Processor

But the decision proved productive as we have a good jump on Fairway Aeration and dry weather in the forecast for the next few days. As long as everything goes according to plan, we will have all fairways core aerated and most of the sand topdressing out by the end of the week. Below is the Aeration schedule for the week outlining specific pre-scheduled alternating F9 / B9 closures. Additionally below is the updated rainfall accumulation for 2017 which is not the most ever but the most we have received in a long time.

Monday 3/27/17 - Course Closed  GCM Core Aerated Fairways 13, 17 & 18.

Tuesday 3/28/17 - F9 Closed till 3:00 PM  GCM Core Aerating F9 Fairways 1-4 & 6.

Wednesday 3/29/17 - B9 Closed till 3:00 PM  GCM Core Aerating B9 Fairways 10, 11-12, 15-16.

Thursday 3/30/17 -  F9 Closed till 3:00 PM  GCM Core Aerating F9 Fairways 5, 8, 9.