Continuing the Grow-in

Everyday, the new greens are improving. The roots continue to develop and lengthen and the damaged areas on top get less and less. As the progress continues, the maintenance activities I previously described will be happening this week, weather permitting. The plan is to aerate the new greens with solid tines on Tuesday. This will help to keep the air exchange working and help the roots grow deeper. At the same time, we will incorporate a good organic fertilizer to feed the soil that will provide a long lasting nutrient source. Then, we apply a good sand topdressing to both fill the holes and smooth the surface followed by a good brushing to raise the leaf blades off the surface to get a better cut. We will continue with weekly topdressing and another aerification in a few weeks. After that, we will wait until the heat of summer passes before doing it again.

The goal of this grow-in is to actually build a new putting surface over tho top of the newly sodded surfaces. I have noticed that after we lowered the cutting height to .200 inches that some minor scalping began to occur. This tells that there too many imperfections to go lower to our normal height of .140 inches. We will continue to add sand to allow the process to work. Sometimes, we have to wait for the turf to do it's thing and not push too quickly because that is when damage occurs and we actually go backwards with progress.

The update to green 7 is that all of the surface has been filled with sod where there once were gaps. All of the surrounds we be sodded this week and it will begin to look like a green. All the sod seems will be hand sanded to help with the lateral growth. We have some additional sod from our nursery that we will installon those couple of spots on greens 4 & 12 and the remainder to be used on greens 7. If we have to, we may purchase some additional sod but will wait and see. We will also seed the areas on 7 when we aerate this week and try to establish more grass in those areas.

Patience is the key at this point in the grow-in. Too much, too fast can be devastating.