coring

I was searching the Turfgrass Information File for another topic and came across this article by John Baranski, CGCS, from the proceedings of the 1993 GCSAA Conference and Show in Anaheim.

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.

For a few years now, when I have private discussions about the type of putting green maintenance that involves few or no holes punched in the surface and minimal sand topdressing, I often hear this response.

First some background information. I had shared this post that showed a number of different scenarios of organic matter change with hollow-tine cultivation (coring) and solid-tine cultivation, including examples with and without sand topdressing.

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.

I used to think of hollow-tine cultivation, with cores removed, as one of the best ways to remove organic matter from the rootzone. Maybe even as an essential way to manage organic matter.

Hollow-tine aerification, coring, core aeration, whatever you call it, removes organic matter from the soil. But if you measure the soil organic matter before pulling any cores, and then measure again after the cores are removed, the soil organic matter % will be exactly the same.

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.

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.