If you've been out playing recently I'm sure you've noticed the difference between the Lake Course and the Hill Course greens. The Lake Course greens are taking much longer to recover than those on the Hill Course. The difference? Grass species. The Hill course, being the much newer of the two, has a much higher population of bentgrass as opposed to the Lake Course greens which have a very high population of poa annua. Bentgrass is a stoloniferous grass that spreads laterally quite well while poa annua is a bunch type and spreads quicker through their prolific seeding than spreading.
Another factor that comes into play here is the size of the aerification tines used this spring. In an effort to improve the growing medium of our greens as quickly as possible, I used larger coring tines. This hasn't been much of a problem on the bentgrass greens, but is certainly a factor on the poa annua greens. To avoid this problem going forward, I will be changing back to smaller tines this fall, but using a multi-tine setup to increase the overall number of holes and still be able to make progress in converting our root zone material. I have used this setup in the past and the greens heal rapidly with the 7/16" tines, regardless of the turf type. The reason I went away from the smaller multi-tine setup was our difficulty getting the sand down in the holes. I don't believe this will be a problem with our new topdressing brush and look forward to quicker recovery times.
Today we have put another shot of fertilizer on the Lake Course greens and with tomorrow's verticutting and topdressing they will be back to normal in no time.
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