After being closed for a week, we are putting the finishing touches on our 2024 fairway aeration & sand topdressing. We decided to close for the traditionally slow week following the 4th of July rather then stretching out the necessary process for 3 to 4 weeks with alternating F9 & B9 closures. This will make the process more productive and produce consistent playing surface's with recovery being more or less equal.
Not only will the fairways recover at the same time, GCM can get back to our normal irrigation regimen after they recover as open aeration holes will cause the fairways to dry out hindering recovery. Additionally we can get back to using sharp mowers as the topdressing sand disperses and the surfaces recover, and we can logically re-sharpen reels.
What To Expect Saturday 7/13/24
You should expect a very playable, freshly aerified fairway surfaces with open holes and the remnants of topdressing sand. As mentioned above, open holes can dry the surface out rapidly so the fairways could be wetter initially then what you might expect, which will effect ball roll temporarily. If you dont want to scratch your clubs you might want to consider using a older set until sand disperses.
A picture is worth a thousand words. For those who are interested enjoy the pic's chronicling the steps of aeration week at GBGC.
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First step is to mow the fairways. We set the fairway mowers to as low as we can currently go (about .400") to "scalp" them down as low as we can get them. Even though we are in the middle of a heatwave in July, these hybrid bermuda fairways can take it as they are actively growing and will recover quickly. |
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Next step is to flag all of the irrigation heads, valve boxes, yardage markers so we do not hit them with the aerator's. |
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Next we start to aerify across the fairway in short patterns on both sides of the flagged irrigation heads, valve boxes & yardage markers. |
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These patterns on both sides of the irrigation head allows for the next aerifyer to move up and down the fairway at ease and safety from hitting the head. Even though the heads, valve boxes and markers are flagged , there is allot going on with a heavy piece of equipment and easy to make a raising or lowering mistake and take out a sprinkler head, valve box or bronze marker. |
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Granite Bay is blessed with 2 large fairway aerators. This one is aerating up the fairway after the above depicted work around the heads, boxes and markers. |
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The third aeration process is the short grass around the greens utilizing a smaller walk behind aerator. This aerator is equipped with smaller coring tines then we used on the fairways but he hole pattern is tighter. Cleanup of these cores is being done by GCM staff with backpack blowers and rakes and shovels as we cant navigate the large aerators and sweepers in these tighter areas adjacent to the putting surfaces. |
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After the actual aeration process we remove the flags from irrigation heads, valve boxes and yardage markers and drag using a keystone metal drag mat. This process preserves previously applied topdressing sand and substantially lessons the burden of the following step, sweeping. |
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Next we start sweeping the core debris with the large sweepers. When we are done with sweeping it is time to start the most time consuming part of the process, sand topdressing. |
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Prior to aeration week we take delivery of topdressing sand in three locations around the course. Above depicts the pile on the Barton Road lot which we use for #1, #2, #4 and any leftovers #9. We also stock pile sand in the corner of the parking lot which we use for #5 - #9 & #17 - #18. The third location on the small out of play lot pin high to the left of #12 green. This pile services #10 - 13 & #15 & #16. |
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We use a 4 yard topdressor to topdress 30 acres of fairway and short mowed hybrid bermuda turf. The above rate represents approximately 31 tons per acre which amounts just over 900 tons. Above Enrique is painting #4 with fairway topdressing sand. |
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Here Enrique is spreading that 30 tons per acre on #5. Again the spreader holds 4 yards so he makes about 170 trips to a sand pile and back during aeration week. That is an average of 34 trips per day and just about 4 trips per hour. Sometimes more trips per hour, many times less obviously depending on the distance needed to travel. |
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This picture depicts #15 recently topdressed on the left, In the middle #16 in process of being topdressed, the green circled section representing one trip to the #12 topdressing pile. On the right is #10 which was topdressed, brushed and irrigated the previous day. |
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Its takes our whole staff to pull off aeration and topdressing of the fairways in a week and I appreciate all of them, but none are more important then the GBGC GCM legend Enrique Reyes Huerta, sand topdressor extraordinaire. |
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Next step is to drag the sand topdressing into the aeration holes and turf canopy. I have personally done most of this process myself since our 2021 conversion and can say every time we do this you can feel these fairways getting better. It wasn't hard to get the sand dry this week as we were in the midst of a July heat wave and our new large fairway brush with stiff bristles worked the sand in nicely. |
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A few days after some deep watering we mow them for the first time and follow them with a blower to clean them up. Doug on the fairway blower has been pretty actively blowing during the core clean-up process as well as the fairway topdressing process moving sand accumulations around with the turbine blower. |
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Irrigation during the week was tricky as we needed to keep the surfaces on the dry side prior to aeration and topdressing but couldn't completely neglect irrigation after they were aerified because of open holes that were exposed to hot drying weather. Good news that any discoloration from dry down will soon recover after we start irrigating and the deep watering they receive after brushing in sand topdressing |
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This represents the product 3 days out of topdressing. Holes on the B9 will be a few days out from the F9 but all should be recovered by next weeks end. We are planning cart path on hole #'s 15 & 16 as they were just topdressed the morning of Friday 7/12/24 and will receive a deep watering when we are done brushing and could be wet when we re-open the course Saturday 7/14/24 |
