This week had us bring in accessories from the course and start to get ready for the winter. We did some fall treatments but the weather is not great (lots of rain in forecast and
1" of rain on Friday night!) so I am trying to hold off but as we get closer to November and the colder the temperature gets I may have no choice but to spray and hope the rain stops.
We completed aerating all greens on Friday with the Verti-Drain as is the tradition. One thing I do in the fall as a pre-aeration survey is go to each green and pull a plug to see what kind of roots we finished off with. As is always the case this is a huge disappoint but it can also be helpful.
 |
| 2 Green |
 |
| 5 Green |
I think I've said it before, but showing pictures of your roots is sort of like posting pictures of yourself in your underwear; i.e. no more secrets, its out there for all to see. In my case I think it could be used for good instead of humiliation. As you can see we have greens with roots barely over one inch and others with more than four inches. A bulk of them fall into the 2 to 3 inch range. I am going to reference the rooting situation in later posts, especially as it relates to making maintenance decision in the summer but for this time out the I want to explaining the importance of root depth and how it impacts the greens aeration in the fall.
 |
| Père Noël on the Verti-Drain |
Short lesson: aeration from a Verti-Drain (in the manner we did this fall) is more for compaction relief, especially at depths greater than a more traditional aeration.
 |
| Pre Aeration Depth |
 |
| Post Aeration Depth |
The tine in the preceding pictures is 10" long and in the first picture I can only push it in about 4" but after aeration the soil has been loosened enough that the tine easily penetrates to a depth of 8". Notice that the tine is in between the holes. This shows the real benefit of this type of aeration in loosening the entire soil profile and not just the area where the tine leaves a hole. Anyways, the importance of knowing the condition of the root zone before aeration helps when we decide what depth to aerate and whether or not to add "kick" (this aerator can be set to give a little "oomph" at the bottom of its stroke to further loosen the soil). We've found out the hard way the greens with shallow roots really don't like a deep Verti-Drain aeration and
really don't like kick. Greens like 2, 7, and 12 were the worst this fall so instead of a deep tine we went traditional and pulled a core with the hopes of increasing roots mass since, for these greens, relieving compaction past the rooting depth of one inch seems silly. There is lots more to discuss here but maybe later.
