aeration

T-Jay Creamer is the golf course superintendent at Olympic View GC in Victoria, British Columbia. The greens there are a mix of bentgrass and Poa annua, and as of May 2024 it’s considerably more Poa than bent.

When a lot of nitrogen is applied relative to plant demand, I guess. The article Creeping bentgrass surface properties following aerification by Hubbard et al. reports the results of an experiment looking at various aerification treatments, tine diameters, and tine spacings on a `Crenshaw’ creeping bentgrass green at Clemson, South Carolina.

This photo of the 18th green at Habu Country Club in March 2001 appeared in my Facebook feed on March 20, and it reminded me of springtime maintenance on golf courses in Japan.

I have recorded both my presentations from the ATPI (Association of Turfgrass Professionals Ireland) conference in Galway. One is systematic improvement of course conditions. In that, I explained how we can only get the kind of playing surfaces we want when both the soil and the grass are in the right condition.

Please forgive me for mentioning hollow-tine cultivation (or core aeration, or coring) yet again, and how it might be overdone. There’s an article I want to share with you, about what happened after coring of sand-based putting greens.

This is an elaboration on, and an extension of, the calculations showing that hollow-tine cultivation, with removal of the cores, doesn’t reduce soil organic matter (OM) at all. That’s not an intuitive result, because OM has obviously been removed from the rootzone.

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. That’s a generalization of Goodhart’s law. I’m an advocate of measuring some surface performance, plant, and soil parameters.

What’s the common theme? You’ll hear all these topics discussed in recent episodes of Frank Rossi’s Frankly Speaking show on TurfNet, or in his presentation for the ASTMA. My usual schedule is such that I don’t listen to podcasts on a regular basis.

A late July solid-tine spiking treatment of a creeping bentgrass green in Hokkaido, Japan. How’s this for a lede? “Hollow-tine coring and solid-tine spiking practices may not alleviate creeping bentgrass summer decline.

There was an article on the Golf Course Industry website about a course that hasn’t core aerified putting greens since the course opened 12 years ago. It’s a short article—466 words.