Dry Ject Aeration of the Greens

This past Monday 3/4/24 we had a contractor perform a practice on our greens called DryJect. The process basically uses high water pressure to draw sand deeply into the core of the green. DryJecting has the ability to get sand deeper into the green profile then even our  Vertidrain Deep Tine Aerator which we use on a regular basis during the growing season. 

The DryJecting process went well, but the appearance of the surface  afterwards resembles more of traditional sandy aeration and will take a few days to get the surfaces back to where they were prior to the process. Below are pictures of the operation.

We started at 5:30 AM with the process. The above DryJect machine represents a block of two units. The large green boxes on the top of the machines are the hoppers in which we have to manually keep filling with sand.

Above represents a single machine. The contractor used both a double unit and the single unit. Both machines were serviced by a team from the GBGC GCM staff. Teams consisted of 2 vehicles per team positioning near the green with a bed full of sand and alternately returning back to the maintenance yard to be loaded with more.  Teams also included  4 to 5 GCM employees each team to load DryJect hoppers with sand from buckets as they traveled across the green.

Good representation of the amount of water needed to drive the sand into the greens. Its a worthwhile process but it does keep the surface wet, especially during the cloudy day we had which subsequently limits our effectiveness in brushing in the sand

Here we are filling the DryJect hopper with dry sand. This activity was pretty constant and the machine(s) never stopped.

Later in the day we still attempted to brush the sand into the surfaces and were just marginally successful as they were still wet from the mornings operation

This represents the surface mid-morning the next day on Tuesday 3/5/24 after we have rolled and brushed and blown the surfaces now that they had dried down some. Greens were rolling  10' after we checked them and balls were not deflecting over small aeration holes. These holes will recover rapidly after some fertility and continued rolling, blowing & brushing throughout the week.