I spent close to 21 hours this past week “spiking” fairways in a poor mans attempt at eliminating some the hydrophobic areas found on fairway turf.
My main concern is that Poa annua or annual bluegrass will colonize the voids and set in motion the endless cycle of grass then no grass when it checks out during the first sign of summer stress.
Poking holes will allow for better water penetration into the soil profile.
Ideally, we would treat hydrophobic areas chemically with wetting agents. In perfect times we would have done both.
The near record levels of rain led to short plant roots this summer. Couple that with the extra cart traffic we witnessed not to mention running heavy mowers over wet fairway turf created compacted soils which magnified our problem areas about the course. Only our worse fairways were “spiked” in there entirety.
Manning the aerifier alone brought back memories of the 8 six hour days we would spend aerifying fairways with one unit. It would take us two weeks to completely get through the course and we always prayed for mother natures cooperation.
_Mk
