Aerification week

We survived another one. I truly was dumbfounded by some of the questions/comments surrounding this process. "Doing them early this year?!" Uh no I have aerified greens the day after Labor Day since 1996. "You do them more than once?" Yes we traditionally do a full blown aerification and topdressing three times per season. Once in the Spring and twice in the Fall. The deep tine one that is contracted out (because we do not have that equipment) has moved all over from Spring and late Fall to this date. These comments/questions were not from new people mind you but ones that have been here since before the 90's. This year was actually special because it was such a cold miserable Winter last year that the early November aerification holes did not heal until April or May. It seemed silly to poke holes in them again right after they healed. Luckily for me the weather was mild this Summer so the decision to skip the Spring aerification did not come back to bite me. The timing of aerification is best if done while the plant is actively growing. This will give you the best and fastest healing and return to normalcy. This latest process is proof positive. The weather was crazy hot.The demands to get the job done in one day were extreme, but the staff stepped up and persevered and the results are that the holes are almost completely gone in three days. I mowed them for the first time today and they look great and are playing well. I will start to back off the water and let them firm up a bit but would love it if everyone would fix ball marks while they are still soft from this process.

Nursery was actually done twice. Cores pulled and then solid deep tined

aerified Tuesday and looked like this on Friday

I was looking over and updating some of the weather data that I keep. It is no surprise that we are behind in rainfall. The course shows that we need rain really bad, but you might be curious to see how the numbers show the story. The image below is a capture of a portion of a spreadsheet which is my own personal rain data so not to be confused with the accuracy of a government station. The biggest detail as I see it is the bottom numbers where it shows April thru September. We are low this year in April, May, June and August compared to the averages for those months. You could pick the lowest total from this sheet in the Ap-Sept row and it would show we are down at least 4 inches. So what does that mean? If you believe that nature tends to average things out my guess would be we are in for a wet September. Maybe we will get it all in one or two storms but my guess is that the monthly total will be in the 3-5" range. You heard it here first.

numbers don't lie

Irrigation blowout 4/5 rough

low flying Coast Guard plane searching 

4 and 20 blackbirds