Greens Aerification

On Tuesday of this week we went out and aerified our greens with 1/4 inch side eject tines.  With all of the rain that we have been getting this month, it is very important to open our bentgrass greens up as often as we can.  This allows our greens to "breathe" and get important air down into our root system.  Over the summer, we try to do this process once a month to help with the heat of the summer and it also helps with any excessive compaction that we might get with all of our equipment being on our greens (greens roller, mowers, topdressers, sprayers, etc).  Tuesday we did pull a small 1/4 inch core when usually we just use a solid tine.  With the extreme rainfall and cooler temps, we went ahead and pulled some material out that will also help with any algae spots that we are starting to see on our greens from the rain.  We followed up this aerification on Wednesday with a fungicide application that focused on Algae and patch diseases.  Over the next 4 months, we will be spraying some type of fungicide every 14-21 days to help prevent any diseases that we might get due to the heat and humidity.  On the bright side, it looks like the rain might be coming to an end on Saturday.  We are hoping for a dry week next week so we can get some things mowed out for The Gusher coming up next weekend.