Verticutting Fairways

Fairway maintenance took our full attention over the last week!  Trust me, the last thing any Golf Course Superintendent wants to do is tear up beautiful grass!  Sometimes, it takes a little roughing up the stone to make it shine, and that is the outlook we used on the fairways this week.  So, why do we verticut the fairways?  What is a verticutter?  Will it ever grow back?  Those are all great questions I have been asked over the last week, and I wanted to shed some light on this dirty, dusty process.

So what is verticutting?  Verticutting is defined as vertical mowing, which uses blades orientated straight up and down to cut slits into the turf profile and remove thatch which builds up over time.  The thatch can lead to a "puffy" or "spongy" turf surface which does not create a very consistent fairway lie.  Bermuda grass grows very aggressively and naturally creates a lot of thatch.  By removing accumulating thatch each year, we can help to keep our fairways growing tight and consistent like carpet.  This is the goal anyway!

We choose to do this process in the middle of the summer time when the weather is hot, and the bermuda grass is most actively growing.  Some of the the first fairways we verticut on Monday, July 15th, have already shown very rapid recovery.  Within a few weeks the grass grow back it will hardly be noticeable anything was done.  Below the turf surface we have created many new growing points  during the process, growing new leaf blades to fill in the voids.  The result with be a much firmer, tighter grass canopy that should improve the play of the golf course.  

Buddy looks about as excited as I am about tearing up good looking fairways!  Here is a look at the verticutter in action working on #8 fairway.

     

Here is a look at the fairways immediately after the machine goes over the turf.  The lines are cut in the turf canopy to help remove the thatch.  You can see all the excess thatch laying all over the turf surface.  I cleaned a little bit away to show the lines that are left, compared to the fairway surface before we started the process.

Big handful of the thatch and sprigs that were removed from the fairways!  A lot of material we can do without!

So how do we pick all the unwanted thatch up and remove it completely?  Well a vacuum of course!  This year we were fortunate for the Club to purchase a Multi-Vac 772, which has already proved to be very handy!  The vacuum runs behind the verticutter and sucks up almost all the debris left over.  You can see in the pictures the before and after of where the tractor drives, almost all the debris is removed and stored in the hopper to be dumped off site.  

View from the tractor pulling the vacuum.  Green grass showing is the first pass made with the vacuum!  Works Great!

After the vacuum does its job, it is time to mow the grass to start to even it back up.  It takes a few cuttings to get everything smoothed out.  After we mow, the blowers will come behind and clean up all the loose material remaining.

This is a photo of #8 fairway, the day after we finished the entire verticutting process.  While the fairway is brown and not nearly as green and pretty as when we started, it is still an acceptable surface to play golf on.  Within 2-3 weeks it will be hard to tell we did anything at all, and everything should look much better!