We aerified all of the fairways today. We use a different machine on the fairways than we use on the greens. This machine is pulled behind a tractor and is ground speed driven (it pokes the same amount of holes wether you go 1 mph or 10 mph) and is a lot wider than our greens aerifier. Fairway aerification is a lengthy process. We start by pulling the cores from the fairway. After they have been aerified, we drag the plugs. This breaks up the plugs and makes them a little more manageable. Once they have been broken up, we blow the fairways off with the tractor blower. The last thing we do is mow the fairways. This helps smooth out the tufts of grass left from the tines. Over the next few days, we will mow them in different directions to help smooth them even more.
You may ask why we pull a core instead of just using a solid tine. Pulling a core is a lot messier and a lot more work to clean up, but if we are going to aerify, pulling material out is the only way to go in my book. If you use a solid tine, all you are doing is causing more compaction between the tines as the soil is just pushed tighter together. If you remove the material by pulling a core, you are relieving compaction and also removing thatch and organic material. This is the same wether you are aerifying a golf course, sports field, or a home lawn.
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| Here is Alex using the aerifier |
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| Here is a close up of the machine and what the plugs and holes look like just after being pulled. |
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| Andrew hard at work dragging the plugs with the steel drag |
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| This is Mike using the tractor blower cleaning the debris left from the drag mat |
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| And we finally mow the fairways to finish up the process |
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| Here is the finished product |
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