Tomorrow we are set for our spring aerification of greens. I know most of you are cringing just hearing those words. Don’t worry- we are breaking tradition and trying a relatively new process called Dryject. The name itself is slightly misleading because the only dry thing about it is the sand that we are using. The machine uses water from our irrigation lines to basically “frac” holes into the green while in the same motion it injects dry sand directly into the holes it had just created. The great thing is there are no cores that have to be cleaned up and all of the holes are completed filled with sand immediately. After the machines have completed the greens, we use a pull behind brush to work the excess sand into the canopy and the green is ready for play. The contractor is bringing 3 machines tomorrow so we hope to have the entire course completed by early afternoon.
You read more about the entire process at The Dryject Website.
Another thing I want to bring to your attention is the driving range tees. As many of you may have noticed, we have made up 2 signs that show how to properly take divots while practicing to maximize our limited turf space on the tees. The correct way on the signs ensures that the hit out area will regenerate and fill in a lot quicker than the improper way. Please try to follow the correct way when practicing on the driving range to ensure that we will still have some turf to hit on by the end of July. The driving range is a very busy place and we need to ensure that we are doing everything possible to have enough practice area for the entire season.
Below are some pictures I took on Friday morning of last week. On Thursday morning, all of the old divots were blown off and the entire tee was mowed. These pictures are of the amount of divots created after only 1 full day of operation.
- One Day’s Divots
- View From the Side
- Another View of the Amount of Divots
- Good intentions of minimizing space being used, but it will take more than a year for this to fill in vegitatively.
- Scatter pattern will fill in quicker but the person has used up most of the turf in the station for the day
- Another station with a scatter pattern
- Photo Courtesy of Sandpines Golf LInks, you can see a small amount of area is being used and the turf left between each strip will fill in much faster