Aeration is a common and necessary practice to maintain high-quality putting greens. While most every golfer accepts this, it doesn’t mean they like it. Superintendents can’t base course agronomics solely on the desires of golfers or they would never be able to do anything disruptive. However, you can communicate about the options for aeration, especially in spring when recovery can be unpredictable.
The first option is using a small-diameter hollow tine or solid tines. Either choice will heal quickly – typically well within the often stated 14-day recovery period. It is possible to accomplish all of your cultivation and organic matter management goals using less-aggressive options throughout the year. It might require an additional aeration event or two this season to reach your total surface disruption percentage and sand incorporation goals, but considering how easy it is to perform aeration with small-diameter tines and how quick the recovery is, this is a good option.
Another approach is to move ahead with larger-diameter hollow tines (greater than 1/2 inch), knowing that if the weather doesn’t cooperate those holes could linger for up to 30 days. The upside of this approach is that courses can achieve their putting-surface disruption and sand-incorporation goals with fewer aeration events, but that could come at the expense of playability for an extended period of time. The risk of slow recovery is not necessarily a reason to avoid larger tines, but it is the exact reason why communication with golfers is so important. Spring weather in the Northeast the last few years has been cool, wet and cloudy at times – which doesn’t really promote quick growth. Couple that with the number of courses in our region with Poa annua greens – a grass that doesn’t spread laterally (very fast) and spring aeration recovery has been slow.
What you decide to do this spring isn’t right or wrong, but it’s definitely an opportunity to communicate and assess the effectiveness of your program. Using smaller tines might seem like the easy answer. But, if it requires you to add cultivation treatments later this season, then perhaps it isn’t right for you. On the other hand, going big in the spring gets a lot of your cultivation over with, but it will diminish putting quality more significantly when golfers are excited to start the season and recovery time is uncertain at best. You can’t predict the weather or make golfers love aeration, but you can at least explain the benefits and trade-offs to different approaches and find the solution that makes the most sense for your course’s agronomic needs and golf calendar.
Northeast Region Agronomists:
Darin Bevard, senior director, Championship Agronomy – dbevard@usga.org
Elliott L. Dowling, regional director, East Region – edowling@usga.org
Brian Gietka, agronomist – bgietka@usga.org