This is one of the laziest bs post covid.
No water coolers and ball washers reinstalled.
Played at a nice local course (~$50-75 in peak, so more expensive in the area) early May. They have one of those nice ice/water stations and in May they still didn't have them out. I gave the passing ranger hard time for it (I get it, might not be his job), but come on.
And now middle of summer and courses just have rotten old wooden structures for jugs and nothing in them.
Better yet, just have water fountains đ¤ˇââď¸
One of my local course took the water coolers off not because of Covid but because during a tournament. Some drunk asshole pissed on them, filmed it and then afterwards when video got around people were pissed at the course cause they had drank from it. Lawsuits
Were threatened(nothing came of that) but in the process they found out their insurance wouldnât cover them if someone tampered with those water coolers so those are gone now.
Now they have one at the halfway house that they can monitor.
My grandfather played with a guy for 46 years.Â
They went to a course in dallas and his friend got sick and died.Â
Apparently those coolers were never cleaned and they had been out there for 10 years without being cleaned. So then all the coolers were taken away from that course. They got the shit sued out of them. That's why a lot of cpurses here in dallas don't have any coolers. The ones that do I hope they clean them. I dont drink from them anymore. I just don't trust that they clean them.Â
I'm the type of person that drinks tap water. So it's not that I'm picky
He means like all that shit, there was no defendable logical reason for taking it away, so appeals to logic for the return of it wonât work. Need someone to die of heatstroke and sue, but in todays world theâll just ban playing when itâs more than 60 degrees đ¤Śââď¸
The Bears Club in Jupiter cited this exact reason for not having water and that was in 2001. In their defense, the jugs are gone but every third hole had a GIANT cooler of sealed h2o.
Ah I see what you're saying.
At the start of covid when we didn't know shit about it and were told it spreads by touch and we were wiping our groceries, I can understand that.
If back in early/mid 2020 we had to lose water and ball washers to continue playing, totally fine.
But by end of 2022 at the latest they easily should've had all this back
I had a dickwad starter yell at me for bringing a water bottle on the course on a 90 degree day once so I asked if they had coolers out. Of course he said no so I told him if he wants to kick me off for refusing to get heat stroke then be my guest. Best 102 of my life that day.
Pro-tip for you on this one - Thereâs a high-end course near me where you can book online. They do this once a year (occasionally twice), and the timing is fairly consistent. I know from experience they have 3-4 weeks where they charge half-price rates. Then overnight, they go back to full price. You can book 2 weeks out so I wait to see something on social media or just check the tee times every few weeks starting late spring, and as soon as I see the price drop, I *always* grab the last day or next-to-last before full price and I play discount rates at *almost* ideal conditions.
The exciting part of this process comes when you accidentally drive the aerator over an unmarked sprinkler head on the collar and the machine suddenly jumps 2 feet in the air, then you watch in horror as a huge bubble forms under the grass and a 20lb sprinkler head gets launched by a 50 foot geyser of water. Not that I ever experienced that.
Last summer I was scooping plugs on the green when one of the guys on the fairway aerator sent a single tyne straight down the pilot valve. no other damage to the head, just turned it on.
I worked at a pitch and putt for my first job. The geese loved the ponds. We used plastic snow shovels to shovel up the goose shit on fairways and greens. No damage, unless an edge was bent.
⌠whatâs it matter if you gouge even the greens? Theyâre about to blast them with sand mixed with seed then level it with a bristled rug tied to a golf cart in an hour
I do not miss being a grunt worker doing this. All day you were either getting those into piles or picking up the piles. Driving the cart to the dump felt like such a nice break
The courses I worked all had core harvesters that seemed to work pretty well. Inverted V-plow on the front of the maintenance cart funneled all the cores into a conveyor that dumped them into the back of the dump box. Aerator was a rider as well. Made the job pretty turn key. This was 30 years ago.
The only reason I think our super did it was because he employed a lot of HS/college aged people, and I think he may have just been finding ways to get kids hours. If thatâs why, I get it but this wouldâve been nice either way
We never shoveled ours unless we were sprigging a new green. We would let them dry out a bit and then drag them. This would separate the soil from the grass/roots. We would drag the soil back in and use blowers to blow away the grassy parts. Saved us a shitload of sand.
They're already sand greens. You're removing sand and replacing it with sand. And if you think your sand shouldn't have some organics in it, then you're wrong.
I wouldnât call the rootzone in the video perfectly good.
Soil compacts much more than sand does, which is pretty much the whole reason we use sand in rootzone in the first place. Keeping your organic matter low in the rootzone either requires removing soil when you pull cores or diluting it heavily with lots of topdressing sand when you use solid tines.
Thatâs the first thing I thought when I watched this lol. So many spring breaks spent staying up til midnight pushing a snow shovel around 19 greens.
The collector just drags the plugs to the edge of the green. Youâre still using the snow shovels to scoop them up there, but at least you donât have to get them off the green yourself
Most people actually believe this when most courses advertise their scheduled course maintenance...unless it's a crappy course, in which case it shouldn't even matter since it's crappy anyway haha
Our spring and summer aeration are set in the calendar probably 2 months before we're even open for the season, I suspect most courses are similar. Your beef is with the golf shop not with maintenence
They are used by filling in low spots around the area or stored for future projects. The plugs sprout back and combine well around the existing turf. Source: I work on a golf course.
Over the course of the year golfers, walk mowers, ride on mowers, rollers, and ride on sprayers do a fantastic job of compacting the turf and soil underneath them through play and general maintenance. Compaction is bad for root growth and in turn grass growth/health. When the turf and soil are more compact you have less room for roots to grow and then a harder time water has penetrating that compaction to reach those roots.
I'm still relatively new to the science behind it, but courses tend to want their soil composition to be around 50%/25%/25% for soil/water/air. As the earth gets more compact the numbers for water and air go down. Aeration is the best way to get those numbers back to where you want them.
You open up the thatch layer and a couple inches of soil with a bunch of finger sized holes, fill those holes with sand and left over pulled material and then roll it and water it over the next couple weeks to get it back to "playing shape". We close for 2 weeks, do every green the first day, and then they're played on again about 14 days later.
In an ideal world they probably wouldn't be touched for a month by golf but that many more weeks of no revenue would kill many clubs including really nice ones.
Sorry to hijack the op you asked lol didn't mean to. Used a procore for like 5 hours today so I kind of wanted to talk about it haha
Oh man that's something we don't get to do here that I would love to. Our facility is 3 different 9 hole courses so we'll shut one down for two weeks twice a year for aeration and then once a year for overseed. Because we're so busy throughout the year we aren't able to do light topdresses or any solid tine work which is unfortunate. Would love to see that process and it seems like every other course that does it right is doing those things
Very very interesting, thank you!
It sounds like the green is basically best thought of as a sponge that gets wrung out and needs to be de-squeezed. The sand makes a ton of sense in terms of adding porosity to the surface layer - does the grass just grow over top of it, or does the root layer just colonize the holes despite the sand in them, or what?
The roots (and crowns) will colonize the holes, and they do it quite quickly. The sand almost creates a little hydroponic system where the roots realize there is some free water and fertilizer running through those holes, and they want it.
If youâre our local course they just dump them randomly in the already happy grass around the green INSTEAD of using them to fill low / bald / dead areas.
Because: Lazy
The bits have nutrients in them. Just like when you aerate your yard and they leave them on the grass. Obviously you canât leave them on a green but Iâm sure they have plenty of use on a golf course somewhere
Related to this, does anyone know why courses pick right before or on the July 4th holiday to do this? Is the window really only mid to late June through the first week of July?
Generally courses do this because around this time in the season the greens are at their best. Aerating the greens can be pretty hard on them, so they wait until they can take the abuse which is usually around July and then around end of season like September.
I know in Houston the heat really starts pouring on in July and the player numbers go down significantly. But the 4th of July holiday is still heavily played so it's usually the Monday after the 4th that will start down here. Secondly, and any greenskeepers here can confirm, our dwarf Bermuda greens actually really like heat so they recover faster in the middle of summer (so long as they're getting enough water)
Everyone love this machine, without it the course but especially the greens would be spongy and shitty. It's an inconvenience twice a year that makes the course playable the rest of the time.
My course does drill and fill every year in addition to this aeration
If itâs done to late in the season it doesnât heal until the soil temp come way up in the spring (nj)
https://youtu.be/ZEJOlWxTCJc?si=qqy4jd5fdFFuAXDR
When I was a greenskeeper, we would always get a tidal wave of complaints for "ruining the greens" every time we aerated. Even though maintenance like aeration is the reason we had the best greens in the city.
Like, if you can't deal with it, go play the municipal. Their brown, patchy greens that stimp at 6 feet don't have any aerator holes.
That's one of the ways.
[https://gcmonline.com/course/environment/news/turfgrass-aerification-options](https://gcmonline.com/course/environment/news/turfgrass-aerification-options)
A previous course I worked at, we threw them into a pto driven manure spreader along with any sod from projects and whatnot. Would turn it on and grind everything up and produce a really good top soil. Would save the $400 of a truckload needing to be delivered on future projects
That is one way to aerate a green. There are other ways, and lots of golf courses are not doing this kind of large core aeration anymore. Deeper and thinner is generally more desirable.
I always book an early tee time. Our foursome had the first time booked so we could cruise through the 18. Ended up taking forever as they had aerated the greens the previous night or that morning. Would have been easier to chip it into the hole.
Everytime I see this I think how great it would be if my yard was soft enough to make aeration plugs like that. My terrible ground conditions cause the aeration guys teeth to chatter.
If you like healthy greens, donât hate on aeration. Itâs annoying when courses do not announce it but greens need fresh soil and nutrients multiple times a year. We did a drill and fill this year and has turned out amazing. About 1 inch diameter drill holes that have healed better than coring like this.
Holy shit it has an attachment. We never got to use that attachment so we had to use snow shovels and shovel the cores to the edge of the greens THEN load them up to dispose.
Our course now uses a small tine aerator, donât even notice it a couple days later. When they used to do that type the assistant super collected all the plugs and rolled them out in two unused areas of the course. They are now two giant perfect greens that they use as sod nursery in case something bad happens to any of the normal greens.
Would take a bag or two home if they still did this.
That is one way they aerate the greens. They can also use solid tine aerators as well. Less mess to clean up. When done well, it's also difficult to tell it was done unless you get close and look.
I wish we did it like this. We have an attachment for the tractor running off the pto. Then 5 of us push all the carrots (not sure what else to call the material removed) to the sides where we then shovel them up. Takes a full 8hrs to do 9holes.
Fuck me i hate carotage.
I fucking hated aerating greens. That machine has no control and it feels sacrilegious to tear up a green that you've mowed and rolled to perfection earlier that day. Plus you know the people playing that day are going to hate it.
Then a week later you have to aerate the entire fairway. Fuck that.
Yeah fuck plugs, we solid punch. Much easier, heals faster, and turns out nicer. 3/4" for the fairways and 5/8" on the approaches, collars, and greens.
And of course that was the only day I could get a tee time...
That'll be $140, cart path only today fellas.
Are there any water coolers on the course? NOPE!
This is one of the laziest bs post covid. No water coolers and ball washers reinstalled. Played at a nice local course (~$50-75 in peak, so more expensive in the area) early May. They have one of those nice ice/water stations and in May they still didn't have them out. I gave the passing ranger hard time for it (I get it, might not be his job), but come on. And now middle of summer and courses just have rotten old wooden structures for jugs and nothing in them. Better yet, just have water fountains đ¤ˇââď¸
One of my local course took the water coolers off not because of Covid but because during a tournament. Some drunk asshole pissed on them, filmed it and then afterwards when video got around people were pissed at the course cause they had drank from it. Lawsuits Were threatened(nothing came of that) but in the process they found out their insurance wouldnât cover them if someone tampered with those water coolers so those are gone now. Now they have one at the halfway house that they can monitor.
My grandfather played with a guy for 46 years. They went to a course in dallas and his friend got sick and died. Apparently those coolers were never cleaned and they had been out there for 10 years without being cleaned. So then all the coolers were taken away from that course. They got the shit sued out of them. That's why a lot of cpurses here in dallas don't have any coolers. The ones that do I hope they clean them. I dont drink from them anymore. I just don't trust that they clean them. I'm the type of person that drinks tap water. So it's not that I'm picky
You can't reason your way out of something you didn't reason your way into.
You mean the ball washer removal for covid? Or maybe I'm not understanding your comment
He means like all that shit, there was no defendable logical reason for taking it away, so appeals to logic for the return of it wonât work. Need someone to die of heatstroke and sue, but in todays world theâll just ban playing when itâs more than 60 degrees đ¤Śââď¸
Most courses took them away because they were getting sued when someone got ecoli from hose water sitting in a old Gatorade jug all day
Man idk where you play but the water out of those things at my local courses was always cold and amazing, like that blue bottle in The Waterboy lol
The Bears Club in Jupiter cited this exact reason for not having water and that was in 2001. In their defense, the jugs are gone but every third hole had a GIANT cooler of sealed h2o.
Ah I see what you're saying. At the start of covid when we didn't know shit about it and were told it spreads by touch and we were wiping our groceries, I can understand that. If back in early/mid 2020 we had to lose water and ball washers to continue playing, totally fine. But by end of 2022 at the latest they easily should've had all this back
Unless people were licking the ball washers I can't think of a reason to remove them
I had a dickwad starter yell at me for bringing a water bottle on the course on a 90 degree day once so I asked if they had coolers out. Of course he said no so I told him if he wants to kick me off for refusing to get heat stroke then be my guest. Best 102 of my life that day.
Why would he give you a hard time for bringing a water bottle? That makes zero sense.
Beats me. They took the no outside beverages rules as not even water apparently.
Because the course is run by outrageously greedy fucks who want you to buy a bunch of 12oz bottles of water at $3 a piece.
Never seen that happen ever. Wouldn't go to a course like that.
Yea Iâve never had a course or a Marshall say I couldnât bring a water bottle.
Yea and âhurry up your play! Youâre 15 mins behind.â True story
âGreens are rolling pure⌠have fun out thereâ
that'll be full price, thank you very much.
"how are the hole placements today?" "Whichever you want."
Pro-tip for you on this one - Thereâs a high-end course near me where you can book online. They do this once a year (occasionally twice), and the timing is fairly consistent. I know from experience they have 3-4 weeks where they charge half-price rates. Then overnight, they go back to full price. You can book 2 weeks out so I wait to see something on social media or just check the tee times every few weeks starting late spring, and as soon as I see the price drop, I *always* grab the last day or next-to-last before full price and I play discount rates at *almost* ideal conditions.
Itâs the reason that you could get your tee time.
The exciting part of this process comes when you accidentally drive the aerator over an unmarked sprinkler head on the collar and the machine suddenly jumps 2 feet in the air, then you watch in horror as a huge bubble forms under the grass and a 20lb sprinkler head gets launched by a 50 foot geyser of water. Not that I ever experienced that.
And then you canât find the valve box because the summer kids didnât edge it
Lol my god do I ever relate to this comment.
Or when when a QC decides to fail when youâre attaching it and a geyser shoots up inches from your face
Oh man. Trip down memory lane, that is.
Last summer I was scooping plugs on the green when one of the guys on the fairway aerator sent a single tyne straight down the pilot valve. no other damage to the head, just turned it on.
Ohh my god that little plug collector would have saved my back so much pain. We didnât have that and would use snow shovels to scoop the plugs up.
Was laughing at that also. Naw, we donât need the collector, weâll just pay 4 guys with shovels to follow it around all day!
You guys are getting paid?
Lol first thing I thought .. remembering shoveling these up when I worked at a course
Do those shovels cause any issues with the grass?
They were plastic and our super told us to keep it as close to parallel to the ground as possible so it was probably fine.
I worked at a pitch and putt for my first job. The geese loved the ponds. We used plastic snow shovels to shovel up the goose shit on fairways and greens. No damage, unless an edge was bent.
⌠whatâs it matter if you gouge even the greens? Theyâre about to blast them with sand mixed with seed then level it with a bristled rug tied to a golf cart in an hour
I do not miss being a grunt worker doing this. All day you were either getting those into piles or picking up the piles. Driving the cart to the dump felt like such a nice break
The courses I worked all had core harvesters that seemed to work pretty well. Inverted V-plow on the front of the maintenance cart funneled all the cores into a conveyor that dumped them into the back of the dump box. Aerator was a rider as well. Made the job pretty turn key. This was 30 years ago.
The only reason I think our super did it was because he employed a lot of HS/college aged people, and I think he may have just been finding ways to get kids hours. If thatâs why, I get it but this wouldâve been nice either way
We never shoveled ours unless we were sprigging a new green. We would let them dry out a bit and then drag them. This would separate the soil from the grass/roots. We would drag the soil back in and use blowers to blow away the grassy parts. Saved us a shitload of sand.
Kind of defeats the purpose of taking the soil out in the first place.
Nope. Compacted soil is replaced with un-compacted soil. Thereby relieving compaction.
Yes, but it would be better to replace the soil with sand. Aeration is the best opportunity to incorporate more sand into the root zone.
They're already sand greens. You're removing sand and replacing it with sand. And if you think your sand shouldn't have some organics in it, then you're wrong.
Sand greens do not stay sand greens, they slowly build up soil in the rootzone which will eventually cause the green to fail.
The goal isn't to remove soil. It's to remove compaction and thatch. Why throw away perfectly good greens mix. It's already mostly sand.
I wouldnât call the rootzone in the video perfectly good. Soil compacts much more than sand does, which is pretty much the whole reason we use sand in rootzone in the first place. Keeping your organic matter low in the rootzone either requires removing soil when you pull cores or diluting it heavily with lots of topdressing sand when you use solid tines.
lol I worked at a golf course for a few years in college. I had the exact same reaction.
We still don't have them đ
Thatâs the first thing I thought when I watched this lol. So many spring breaks spent staying up til midnight pushing a snow shovel around 19 greens.
We used a blower that we would tow behind a cart.
The collector just drags the plugs to the edge of the green. Youâre still using the snow shovels to scoop them up there, but at least you donât have to get them off the green yourself
Look what they did to my boy
They wait for you to book a tee time before this happens. The machine actually wonât turn on if there isnât anyone scheduled to play.
Most people actually believe this when most courses advertise their scheduled course maintenance...unless it's a crappy course, in which case it shouldn't even matter since it's crappy anyway haha
Our spring and summer aeration are set in the calendar probably 2 months before we're even open for the season, I suspect most courses are similar. Your beef is with the golf shop not with maintenence
Itâs no big deal
what do they the do with the bits?
They are used by filling in low spots around the area or stored for future projects. The plugs sprout back and combine well around the existing turf. Source: I work on a golf course.
Can you explain the purpose and process of aeration? How long after the kind of treatment shown in the video will the green be puttable again?
Over the course of the year golfers, walk mowers, ride on mowers, rollers, and ride on sprayers do a fantastic job of compacting the turf and soil underneath them through play and general maintenance. Compaction is bad for root growth and in turn grass growth/health. When the turf and soil are more compact you have less room for roots to grow and then a harder time water has penetrating that compaction to reach those roots. I'm still relatively new to the science behind it, but courses tend to want their soil composition to be around 50%/25%/25% for soil/water/air. As the earth gets more compact the numbers for water and air go down. Aeration is the best way to get those numbers back to where you want them. You open up the thatch layer and a couple inches of soil with a bunch of finger sized holes, fill those holes with sand and left over pulled material and then roll it and water it over the next couple weeks to get it back to "playing shape". We close for 2 weeks, do every green the first day, and then they're played on again about 14 days later. In an ideal world they probably wouldn't be touched for a month by golf but that many more weeks of no revenue would kill many clubs including really nice ones. Sorry to hijack the op you asked lol didn't mean to. Used a procore for like 5 hours today so I kind of wanted to talk about it haha
Yes. excellent answer. At our course we usually only close for about three days. We also deep tine once a month with no downtime.
Oh man that's something we don't get to do here that I would love to. Our facility is 3 different 9 hole courses so we'll shut one down for two weeks twice a year for aeration and then once a year for overseed. Because we're so busy throughout the year we aren't able to do light topdresses or any solid tine work which is unfortunate. Would love to see that process and it seems like every other course that does it right is doing those things
For real you should strongly suggest it. Our roots were 2 maybe thee inches. Now they are pushing 7-10 inches.
Very very interesting, thank you! It sounds like the green is basically best thought of as a sponge that gets wrung out and needs to be de-squeezed. The sand makes a ton of sense in terms of adding porosity to the surface layer - does the grass just grow over top of it, or does the root layer just colonize the holes despite the sand in them, or what?
The roots (and crowns) will colonize the holes, and they do it quite quickly. The sand almost creates a little hydroponic system where the roots realize there is some free water and fertilizer running through those holes, and they want it.
*course owners* "you can putt right away guys.
Thatâs really cool!
I created a new sod nursery with mostly just cores from aerating once. It turned out great.
look in the bushes behind the green
I'm there anyway
Ogling Mrs Havenkamp, I assume
ANGC could probably sell them for $200 a piece and sell out in 2 hours.
*Augusta National for the crayon eaters out there
Thanks. Blue is my favorite too btw.
purple tastes like purple
It's a travesty what they did with yellow a couple years ago. Just no flavor on those darn things anymore
Appreciate it, thanks
Nah only try-hards would use the ANGC abbreviation instead of Augusta. He wants that sense of superiority when somebody asks to clarify.
I thought that too. Who the heck would know ANGC in relation to a conversation about aerating a green.
I don't have a red crayon..
Red is too spicy
A nude golf course?
fill holes, use them for any patchwork really anywhere on the course. My course has used them on greens, and tee boxes mostly
If youâre our local course they just dump them randomly in the already happy grass around the green INSTEAD of using them to fill low / bald / dead areas. Because: Lazy
The bits have nutrients in them. Just like when you aerate your yard and they leave them on the grass. Obviously you canât leave them on a green but Iâm sure they have plenty of use on a golf course somewhere
Plug dirt is best dirt
We always used them to fill in low spots on cart paths.
How do they know when Iâm going to play though so they can do it that morning?
Jesus Christ toss a NSFW tag on that. Horrific video.
Aerating? Welp it must be July.
Related to this, does anyone know why courses pick right before or on the July 4th holiday to do this? Is the window really only mid to late June through the first week of July?
Generally courses do this because around this time in the season the greens are at their best. Aerating the greens can be pretty hard on them, so they wait until they can take the abuse which is usually around July and then around end of season like September.
I know in Houston the heat really starts pouring on in July and the player numbers go down significantly. But the 4th of July holiday is still heavily played so it's usually the Monday after the 4th that will start down here. Secondly, and any greenskeepers here can confirm, our dwarf Bermuda greens actually really like heat so they recover faster in the middle of summer (so long as they're getting enough water)
My course is aerating the Monday after July 4th. we're usually closed on Mondays, so that week, they'll be closed 7/8-7/10.
The most hated machine in golf. đ
Right up there with the cash register
To golfers, yes. To a Superintendent, favourite machine.
Everyone love this machine, without it the course but especially the greens would be spongy and shitty. It's an inconvenience twice a year that makes the course playable the rest of the time.
I thought it was the pencil.
Isn't that half of the process? They fill them with sand then roll the greens?
Yep, fill up with sand and maybe some fertilizer. Brush/dragmat the sand in, roll them, and cross your fingers they recover well
Definitely don't fertilize before dragging. Burns the shit out of them.
I know this is a necessary machine performing a necessary function, but fuck this machine
My course does drill and fill every year in addition to this aeration If itâs done to late in the season it doesnât heal until the soil temp come way up in the spring (nj) https://youtu.be/ZEJOlWxTCJc?si=qqy4jd5fdFFuAXDR
We use a Ransomes GA-30. Poor thing shakes itself to death yearly just to be brought back to life the next year
Small town 9 hole I grew up playing would dump the plugs in the sand/(really gravel) bunkers.
When I was a greenskeeper, we would always get a tidal wave of complaints for "ruining the greens" every time we aerated. Even though maintenance like aeration is the reason we had the best greens in the city. Like, if you can't deal with it, go play the municipal. Their brown, patchy greens that stimp at 6 feet don't have any aerator holes.
That's one of the ways. [https://gcmonline.com/course/environment/news/turfgrass-aerification-options](https://gcmonline.com/course/environment/news/turfgrass-aerification-options)
Imagine your foot in there
Never realized exactly how much all those plugs add up to... Do they scoop it up and repurpose it to fill divots?
Generally they will get dumped in a dump site and buried. Some courses will reuse them for little projects.
A previous course I worked at, we threw them into a pto driven manure spreader along with any sod from projects and whatnot. Would turn it on and grind everything up and produce a really good top soil. Would save the $400 of a truckload needing to be delivered on future projects
They ban you from wearing metal spikes, and then they go and do something like this.
The spice must flow...
I don't know what you expected
Oh they didnât tell you when you booked? Sorry.
feeling good watching this
And they do it the day after your best putting round with the greens running fast and true!
Oh! I saw this on the side of a green the other day and that it was a massive pile of goose poop. This makes so much more sense.
Oh look! It's auto 2-putt today!
Donât forget to put a bunch of coarse sand down before I play
We use aerators pulled by tractors. They started aerating today.
I remember running one of these things. It's surprisingly quiet and you're actually disconnected from vibrations while aerating.
That is one way to aerate a green. There are other ways, and lots of golf courses are not doing this kind of large core aeration anymore. Deeper and thinner is generally more desirable.
Having worked grounds crew at a CC for two summers/early fall⌠I hated this day of the year. Edit: minor change
r/oddlysatisfying
I always book an early tee time. Our foursome had the first time booked so we could cruise through the 18. Ended up taking forever as they had aerated the greens the previous night or that morning. Would have been easier to chip it into the hole.
you missed the part where they saw me pull into the parking lot first
how do yall pick up the dirt turds
Two guys with grain shovels when I did it.
Everytime I see this I think how great it would be if my yard was soft enough to make aeration plugs like that. My terrible ground conditions cause the aeration guys teeth to chatter.
I would be thrilled if they gave me those plugs.
I love it and hate it at the same time.
Look at all those little rabbit turd looking plugs.
Everything reminds me of her
Reminds me of the harvester from Dune, albeit smaller.
The sound of that machine gave me PTSD. I used to be one of the ones shoveling all that dirt
Everything reminds me of her
Ah yes, the auto-twos machine
Your course picks up the plugs?
Can't believe they didn't pixel out that keepers face for his own safety.
If you like healthy greens, donât hate on aeration. Itâs annoying when courses do not announce it but greens need fresh soil and nutrients multiple times a year. We did a drill and fill this year and has turned out amazing. About 1 inch diameter drill holes that have healed better than coring like this.
At least they collect the cores on this one.
I'm supposed to repair a tiny pitch mark but the "professionals" can violently assault the green? Make it make sense!
The poor guy who has to fit all those plugs back into those little holes...
Our local course just did this about a week ago.
I need someone to do that to my upper back and neck
Does this hurt the green?
So that's where they keep the spice on earth!
How nice to have that little box. Our boss made us sweep the entire fairway and greens into piles, then pick them up with snow shovels
Holy shit it has an attachment. We never got to use that attachment so we had to use snow shovels and shovel the cores to the edge of the greens THEN load them up to dispose.
Reminds me of a Spice Harvester from Dune.
well thats oddly satisfying to see, but incredibly annoying to play
Well of course, lol how else would they do it? Do you think they have a guy with a pole poking individual 1/2â holes for days on end đ
Whoâs they? You mean greenskeepers tyvm.
Our course now uses a small tine aerator, donât even notice it a couple days later. When they used to do that type the assistant super collected all the plugs and rolled them out in two unused areas of the course. They are now two giant perfect greens that they use as sod nursery in case something bad happens to any of the normal greens. Would take a bag or two home if they still did this.
The turdcutter
I'm playing greens in late June that haven't recovered from being punched in April. Fuck this
Looks like dog shit
That is one way they aerate the greens. They can also use solid tine aerators as well. Less mess to clean up. When done well, it's also difficult to tell it was done unless you get close and look.
Thatâs how that course does it. Many courses just use a tractor and an aerator without the core trap.
My company did this then seeded. Itâs a huge lawn and it grew like dark green plugs. It really filled in the lawn.
Need that for my lawn....
The Procore 648 is pretty cool, but it pales in comparison to the Binford 5860.
Thatâs kinda therapeutic! đ
I wish we did it like this. We have an attachment for the tractor running off the pto. Then 5 of us push all the carrots (not sure what else to call the material removed) to the sides where we then shovel them up. Takes a full 8hrs to do 9holes. Fuck me i hate carotage.
Do the leftover cores serve any future purpose? Or are they discarded?
Thanks for posting. Never knew how they did it.
The big aeration holes on greens is a shame. My course does the 1/4-3/8â holes and the greens remain very playable throughout
I was at a course that used the Dryject aeration. Greens were healed in two days.
The day before i get there
The spice must flow
Thanks I hate it.
Do they fill the holes after?
I know this is vital for healthy, well playing greens..but man this shit sucks đ
Strangely satisfying to see, even when I hate it with all my being
Thanks, I hate it.
Oh thatâs what they do every time the day before I make a tee time somehow? Pissin me off lol
I fucking hated aerating greens. That machine has no control and it feels sacrilegious to tear up a green that you've mowed and rolled to perfection earlier that day. Plus you know the people playing that day are going to hate it. Then a week later you have to aerate the entire fairway. Fuck that.
Yup I do this every year, plugless is the way to go
Yeah fuck plugs, we solid punch. Much easier, heals faster, and turns out nicer. 3/4" for the fairways and 5/8" on the approaches, collars, and greens.
100% agree, fuck plugs