The Importance of Cultural Practices for Golf Courses

cultural practices or maintenance of soil and turf are an important and necessary function of golf courses in order to maintain and promote healthy and manageable turf which means better playing conditions and consistent greens in order to have a smooth roll 95% of the year there are certain cultural practices that must be done 5% of the year greens can develop inconsistencies if soils thatch and root zone development are not managed properly through routine cultural practices one of the most important cultural practices is the process of era fication which relieves soil compaction during the era fication process mechanical tines create small holes in the turf improving oxygen availability in the root zone the influx of oxygen and release of carbon dioxide stimulates plant growth and aids in developing a stronger healthier root zone turf density is also increased meaning there are more plants per square foot which vastly improves putting quality the benefits of verification include a consistent smooth playing surface and greatly improved soil profile allowing for a resilient healthy plant throughout the year heralds visited timber pines Country Club in Spring Hill Florida to discuss era fication and other cultural practices with superintendent Robert wiemer so we're at 85,000 rounds which is a great amount of rounds compared to what we were probably six seven years ago so the era fication aspect is is greatly impeded we are Fi quite often here and we Arif I everything along the wall I try to do as best cultural practices as I possibly can which includes vertic gunning at least every other week on my champion greens I try my best to keep the thatch at a reasonable possible manageable height I have a schedule from January 1st to December 31st but that schedule changes more than 365 days a year and it's it's actually funny the only thing that doesn't change are my big dates you know my verification dates our vacation will get done three times a year and that's at least our teas and greens our fairways roughs and any high compact areas you know in and outs and certain fairways are around the t's they'll get done it at least twice a year and we do those as much as we possibly can during a weekly basis before we ever era fie any greens we double and sometimes triple Vertica our greens to get the thatch out then we pull the cores with our core harvester and then we top dress roll brush it in we want to be playable two weeks after we verify any of the golf courses especially on the greens as soon as our walk hair fires get offers 648 we put them straight on the tees we straight Doherty's at a one and a half inch setting for instance heed our two fairway or fires go first thing Monday morning as well and they go as far as they possibly can which on for the week that the one golf course will be closed basically they can get anywhere between 6 & 8 fairways done and as far as our roughs go we just use our airway or fire the roll type ever fire except for along our cart pass where we used our soil reliever and did five rows on each side of any playable or drivable turf where it gets so much compaction and we go ten inches deep with those and basically we try to get it done by Wednesday and Thursday and Friday or clean up and set up for Saturday's opening every bit of how good that we stay a hundred percent grass on all our greens is attributed to all the cultural practices that we do throughout the summer months we want the same things that anybody else wants you know we want the best playing conditions possible but to do that we literally need to do these cultural practices I mean it's the bottom line it's the future and it'll stay that way for years to come you

Channel: HarrellsLLC

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Keywords: fertilizer, harrells, harrell's, cultural practices, aerification, core aerification, golf course, golf, golf course maintenance, golf course maintenance program, golf course cultural practices, golf cultural practices, verticut, verticutting, greens program, greens maintenance, greens, golf course greens, fairways, fairway maintenance, roughs, rough maintenance, greens core aerification, greens aerification, fairway core aerification, fairway aerification, harrells-golf-video

Id: rlN4GdkAJLc

Length: 4min 49sec (289 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 18 2014