Squeezing In Much Needed Verticut & Topdress On Greens

Rain is once again in the forecast for this afternoon and there is a chance of thunderstorms this morning but it looks to be to the north of us on the radar.

Rain activity to the north of us at 6am this morning

With several weeks of rainy weather we've had to postpone our regular practice of verticutting and topdressing which is normal performed on a biweekly basis.  As a result, the process is long overdue and the greens could really benefit from this treatment with respect to speed, smoothness and firmness.

With the clear break in the skys this morning, the crew got out on the course extra early to start the verticutting with the triplex at 4:30 am.  The process takes a while because the buckets need to be dumped after each pass the triplex takes across the green.  An extra person needs to ride along green to green with a full size Workman to help dump the excess material collected in the buckets from the verticutter.  It's amazing the amount of organic material that is removed in the process!

The green is then cut with our other triplex to remove the excess material not picked up by the buckets.  After blowing off the green, we then took two passes around with the Toro 648 aerator equiped with 1/4 inch solid tines to alleviate any compaction around the collars and cleanup pass stressed areas.  These holes will be overseeded with bentgrass and fertilized with an organic fertilizer to promote stronger turf to get us through the summer stress period.  The greens will then be topdressed to finish the process.

All this in an effort to provide a truer, faster and firmer putting surface!

Have a great round!