Aerification and the traps continue to progress

I apologize for not posting sooner.  It has been a wave of activity here in the maintenance department.  Between 15 tee, 17 traps, and aerification, the crew is pooped.  We crammed a lot of projects and maintenance into a three week period.  Fortunately, Mother Nature has helped with some favorable weather!

Aerification was completed Monday and Tuesday of this week.  We used almost the exact same protocol as the last two times.  We did not "pull a core" as is traditional, instead using a serious of deep- and conventional-solid tines to puncture lots of holes, some as deep as 10".  We then topped them all off with a generous helping of sand, brooms, and elbow grease.

I won't bore you with the details as I did last October, but feel free to ask me any questions.  I realize it is both unfortunate AND fortunate that we aerified on such a nice week of weather.  Even though the greens are messed up now, this great weather will help them heal much sooner.

17 traps are also progressing.  We have edged them out and are in the process of compacting and preparing the floor of the traps to receive sand.  We will allow the sod to have a chance to "knit in" a little more, and hope to have the hole completely open before the end of October.  In the meantime, please be very careful when retrieving balls as the subsoil and sod are still quite unstable. 

Thanks for your patience!

At this point the green has already been verticut, deep-tined (see small holes on far left of photo), and covered with sand.  This machine is using 3/4" solid tines about 4" deep to pound the sand into the profile. 

A tow-behind brush does most of the work to get the sand into the holes.

It doesn't quite get all of the holes filled perfectly.

A little hand work is necessary to get absolutely every hole filled.

We then roll the greens until they cry for mercy.  It takes 3-4 good rollings to get the surface back in relatively acceptable playing condition.

Meanwhile, we are still edging out and prepping the traps for sand.

With such a mix of materials (ie rock, clay, topsoil, sand) it will be essential to pack the floors of the trap to ensure we get as little debris/soil as possible getting up into the sand.

We will go over this several times to get the trap just right.