Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Scary, continued
A few days after aerification, we started to see some of the stress caused by the process. Pictured below is the sixth green, one of 5 greens that had a little damage. We aerfied all of these on Monday evening and did not finish up and irrigate until 7:00 pm the next day. This is our standard operating procedure which gets the job done in one closed day.
These spots dried up and stressed out during all the horrible things we did to the greens. This is never fun to see, but I expect a few stressed out locations every time we aerify. Day by day, they improve and rarely do we lose any turf. These pictures were taken on Saturday, four days after the holes were punched.
Tomorrow I will show you what they look like after a week to heal. This morning we mowed with the triplex riding mower at a height of .150 and tomorrow we will switch to the walking mowers. Many of the greens are 90% healed a week after the process, but they are still slow, shaggy, and wet.
So take a look at the pictures. What do you think when you see this? I've had a few comments along the lines of, "Are we going to lose those greens?". No, we probably won't lose an area the size of a cup. Turf is much stronger than we give it credit for and can survive much worse than this.
I tend to look closer, like this last picture and I see a bunch of green grass. I see the weaker portions are the intermingled blades of poa annua that is better off lost. I see most of the brown is actually leaf tips that were burned up during the sanding and brooming during a warm day with no water. When I cut a small plug, I see white roots that are happy to have more oxygen. Best of all, the next day, I see a dramatic improvement.
More to come.
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