I sure hope you have not seen this on your putting greens. These putting greens are a classic case of mismanagement. This particular golf course has had a checkered past. Built in the early 90's, went into bankruptcy soon after opening and several different owners since then and this is where the putting greens are today. A situation many of our golf courses are in today. However, I heard the statement "The membership does not like it when we aerify." Well who owns the course and who is going to pay when the proper cultural practices have not been done?

This did not happen overnight. It took years to reach the thickness of organic matter you see here. Some of the putting greens actually have a 3" layer. If you want to know what they feel like just jump on top of your bed and start strolling around.

What can be done? Moving may be the best option for some. All jokes aside you can aerify your way out of this. Everyone needs to be on board because that is going to be a long hard road. Be prepared to lose your entire summers of golf to poking holes, verti-cutting, and topdressing. With any luck you should start catching up in a few years. The quickest easiest route is to resurface. You can take a sod cutter and remove the organic layer. Bring the surface back up to grade with a mix that matches your present mix, till in, fumigate and plant with your choice of turf. I don't think this particular green is a good candidate for "NO TILL". The entire process can be done in as little as 2.5-3 weeks from start to planting. Then we have the grow-in that will usually take 6-8 weeks for coverage and an additional 4 weeks to really get them playing well. One golfing summer and you will have manageable putting greens for years to come.

Remember just because you have basically new putting greens it does not mean you can skip cultural practices. We still must aerify, verti-cut, and topdressing but just not as aggressive as you would  to catch up with the beast to the right.

If your course is thinking about resurfacing their putting greens please give us a call. We will be glad to be of service to your club.

In the video, you will see our laser trencher. On this project, we installed over 23,000 feet of 4" seepage drainage on a polo field. We installed them on 20 foot centers. The field is approximately 13 acres so any closer would have been cost prohibitive. The main branch was 6" seepage drain pipe. The average lateral length was around 200 feet. The trenches were dug 24" deep and 8" wide. The depth was required to handle the length and allowed for us to get under the irrigation easily.

The problem was that the field had only a 1% fall from side to side. This does not sound like much, but over the 600' width it is about 6' of fall. This sounds like a lot until you get out and see the field. When turf is added any little bird bath exacerbates the problem by holding a huge amount of water.

The trencher, as you can see picks up the spoils and ejects them into a Pronovost trailer to be hauled off. The entire system is automated and runs off lasers. After the initial setup, you can just take off and drive. It will carry any grade you desire. On this particular job, we were removing about 2.5 cubic yards every 35 feet. So on a 23,000 foot job you can only imagine. The project took us a little over 10 weeks.

Before we started the project, it was very difficult  to walk on the field. When we were finished, after a 1.5" rain, we could drive on it in about a day or so.

If you have similar drainage issues on your golf course or polo field, please call.