Countdown to Aerification

As I sit in my office finalizing the specifics of our almost night long aerification two things strike me, we are 45 mins away and there is storm heading towards us......Can we get a break!! My team and I made the decision to aerify the greens at night because of the heat. I am not concerned about the heat affecting the greens, but the heat affecting my team. We will begin aerifying the back 9 at about 5:30pm. We will push as hard as we can until about midnight. At 4am, part of my team will return and begin aerifying the putting green, 9th green and 6th green. We hope to have all greens completed by around 10am, weather permitting.

We will be using 3/8" tines on a quad block, so there will be more smaller holes versus less bigger holes, to put it simply. We will make some fertilizer applications tomorrow morning to push the recovery as quickly as we can. As stated in the email Joe Mackley sent out, we will not be able to mow the greens on Saturday and Sunday morning. This is because the sand will be wet causing the mowers to jam or cake on a roller. Until the amount of sand is reduced on the surface from turf growth, any cultural practices we do can only be done when the sand is dry. It has been asked before about removing the dew on the greens if we are not mowing. Whipping or dragging the greens when the sand is wet will pull the sand to the surface and slow our recovery. We will be doing everything we can to ensure a rapid recovery.

Thank you for your cooperation.