Core aerator question

[brantley]

Are the tines(spoons ?) on a rolling core aerator rigidly attached? I am having a hard time seeing how a core 3 inches deep, as I have seen claimed, can be pulled without without ripping out the surrounding soil as the tine comes back out.

 

[pajoube]

The core is rigid and when you move forward you have the 2 to 3 inch core pulling the plug up along with moving the dirt forward a little. It is not as pronounced as you would think, not like a furrow just a slight indent.
PJ

 

[art]

I've used these before on my lawn and sold and demo'd several with sales. Have had to go slower in some soils to keep from moving to much in sandy type conditions.

 

[JimMc]

A good deal of time has been spent by many companies generating the tine geometry and angle they mount on the spool to minimize this situation. Most tine have a curve and the tip in chamfered as well. Of course, many lawns are aerated with a slicing type aerator which cuts a slit rather than pulling a core. And the debate goes on as to which is better.

 

[bubenberg]

aeration can only be done as other posts on this site so aptly have explained by removing some soil (tilling of some sort) so that the plant root has an easier time too grow.

any other device only adds to the compactation other than the slicing methode.

core aeration also as the plugs desintegrate creats the perfect seed bed for new seedlings so multiple passes IN FALL are very much recommended but not two days before your daughters wedding.
good luck

 

[justractors]

Two days prior to any major event may bring the wrath of the Woman down upon you.
Core aerification is a very common practice on golf courses. At the one where I am currently employed we have two Toro aerifiers a Pro Core 440 which is 44" wide and a Pro Core 880 which is 88" wide. Both are pto driven the small one off a Kubota B7500 and the larger off a Kubota L4310. The smaller unit is used on greens and tees and the other on fairways.
We normally aerify every 30 to 45 days depending on the temperature. Plugging when it is too hot places additional stress on the turf. We also verticutt the fairways to a depth of about 3/4" every other week, the tees to a depth of 1/2" every month, and the greens to a depth of about 1" also every month. The fairways are done with verticut reels on a Toro Reel Master 5400D, the tees with verticut reels on a Toro Greens Master 3100, and the greens with a Graden Verticutter/Scarifier.
Immediately after verticutting and core aerating, the greens are top dressed with a special sand mixture to refill the holes for better ball roll. This sand mixture means the reel cutting edges are "toast" for the next couple of days since metal blades fair badly when subjected to a couple of hours of attempting to cut sand. Within a week or so the greens have healed enough and the sand has found it's way through the canopy so the greens look and cut normally again.
Just the machinery to perform these tasks cost about $125,000 and that is only considering one RM5400D (we use two) and one GM3100 (we have four).

Back to the original question, The aerifiers we use have an up and down movement provided by a gear box, pulleys, belts, and arms. They do not go straught up and down because to do so would cause enlongated holes at the top of the turf, Instead they use a movement that allows the top of the hole to remain round and causes the tine to leave the enlongated portion of the hole beneath the surface. It you were to stick your finger into the hole you would feel that the hole is about 1/2" longer at the bottom than at the top. This is based on a 4" hole depth and will vary depending on hole depth.
The "pile on a bunch of blocks" and tow behind units also leave an enlongated hole but are not nearly as predictable as the pto driven style since the hole depth varies a great deal depending on the consistency of the soil and the weight of the blocks.

Sorry about the length of the post but I do like talking about my work.

Of course this is only my humble but well thought out opinion,
Bill

 

[Turfman]

What are your grass varieties and soil conditions? Are you leaving the cores on the tees and fairways?

Thanks, Turfman

 

[justractors]

The fairways and tees are L93 creeping bentgrass (cut at .400") and the greens are Penn A4 creeing bentgrass (right now being cut at .140" and working to get down to .125" by the end of the season). The rough area are all Kentucky Bluegrass cut to a height of 2 1/2". The Penn A4 has never been used this far north before but seems to be doing very well. It is considered an ultra dwarf and as such has a very dense canopy and must be either aerated or verticut often to allow water, oxygen. and topdressing sand to get trough.
The tees and greens were built using USGA specified soil mixtures (about 80% sand to 20% loam) and the fairways are the areas natural mixture.
The aerated cores and verticutting residue area first drug to remove most of the sand, blown into piles with back pack, walk behind, or tractor mounted blowers, and then picked up by hand on the greens and tees or with a Toro Rake-O-Vac on the fairways.

 

[longway5]

The course where I work uses much the same aerating equipment.
We have two Toro aerators, a walk-behind greens aerator and a ProCore 660. We don't use the walk-behind to much anymore, and tend to set the ProCore up on a L3250 and take care of all the greens in two or three days. We really only do full-green aeration once a year, in mid august when we still have many of the summer crew. The plugs are cleaned up with a John Deere TC125 material collection system, which, if used by a competent operator, will leave very little burn marks on the greens. Snow shovels are also used to move the plugs around. The TC125 will leave some fine dirt behind, but since we come back with a heavy application of sand and a product called Profile (a fine ceramic dust that holds moisture), everything gets swept into the green.
We topdress usually every two weeks during the summer with a very fine application which gets swept/watered/mowed into the greens in about two days or so. You're right about the sand having fun with the reels; we hand-mow our greens in the summer, and since we got a new set of mowers this year, the old set has turned into our topdressing set.
As for equipment costs, I'm just glad I get to use the equipment not have to pay for it.

 

[NYTrainer]

Am I correct in assuming that the sand mixture is mainly used to cut down on fungus type lawn diseases? While I always thought a well screened top soil was an ideal seedbed I was told it fosters lawn diseases, especially during hot humid weather. What is in the top dressing? Is it a mix of sand, peat and ?? I'm sure alot of readers find this an interesting topic. I know I do. Thanks.

 

[justractors]

The primary purpose of the sand is to help keep the greens firm for more consistent ball roll and to help control thatch build up.
The top dressing sand is just sand and the critical part of it comes in with the size of the sand grains. If they are too large they fail to work their way through the canopy, which is pretty much the fancy name for the blades of grass and the stems, if they are too small they will plug up the openings that allow the water. oxygen, and other nutrients to get to the roots.
The sand we use where I work costs about $85 a ton delivered. We actually have two different piles of sand one for top dressing and the other for filling the sandtraps/bunkers. The bunker sand is also a special sand that has been devleloped over time to help insure that the golf ball stays on top of the sand and does not allow the ball to sink into the sand so far that the golfer can not more easily hit it out of the trap.
You have to remember on a golf course time is money and although it looks like the maintenance staff tries to make the course more difficult, the opposite is true in that we try to keep the play moving along as rapidly as possible
About the only grass growing in top soil is in the rough area. The top soil would allow diseases and more importantly critters a place to live and multiply. Critters such as grub worms which in turn bring in the moles looking for a meal.

 

[Turfman]

The purpose of top dressing is to reduce the thatch layer. The courses use sand because it provides a firm playing surface. The addition of soil over top of the turf will increase the microbial activity above and inside the thatch layer and increase the speed of the decomposition. This creates a healthy mat (the layer below the thatch) where the growth points of the grass plant reside. Reducing the thatch layer will also aid in getting water to the root system and require much less water on the area. Contrary to popular opinion, mulched grass clippings don't substantially add to the thatch layer.

Turfman

 

[skipperbrown]

How do you spread the topcoat?

 

[longway5]

Topdressing is usually spread through the use of a topdresser (go figure). On the Toro utility-vehicle-mounted one we have, this is a hopper with a conveyor belt running along the bottom. A gate controls how much sand (or other topdressing material) is being carried out of the hopper by the belt. At the very end of the belt (at the end of the vehicle) is a large spinning brush that sweeps the sand off the belt and into the air, where it falls to the ground in a uniform distribution. Depending on the position of the gate, it can put a very small amount of sand out (where I could topdress 4 or 5 greens on one load) or a lot (where I get two or three passes at a green). Larger topdressers exist for topdressing fairways, and get pulled behind a tractor. Some even have a separate conveyor belt on a boom so one could place material, like filling a bunker. A lot of equipment in the golf course maintenance industry seems to be very expensive, so when you can get multiple uses out of one piece of equipment, money is saved.

 

[Turfman]

I throw it out with a shovel and work it in with a leaf rake.

 

[justractors]

We also have the Toro TD1800 like you are describing and recently purchased a Ty Crop Pass Pro 180 unit that also mounts on the same Workman style vehicle. It also has the conveyor belt to move the sand to the rear but instead of a brush to distribute the sand this one use two spinners which throw the sand in a wide path up to 35' wide depending on vehicle engine rpm and control settings on the spreader.
We also just purchased the Ty Crop MH 400 which can be used to fill the bunkers and also has the twin spinners to top dress the fairways.
You are very correct in saying they aren't cheap the 180 cost about $11,000 and the 400 about $24,000. They will save many man hours however and should have a life expectancy of about 15 years if properly used and cared for.
If anyone is interested in the Ty Crop equipment you can do a seach for "Ty Crop" and find their web site.

 

[skipperbrown]

I need a lot of topdressing to fill in some ruts and low spots and the shovel/rake method seems too manual labor intensive and the topcoat machine seems too expensive.

I was hoping I could fill my fel w/ topcoat and somehow run it through a grid and evenly spread it. I had some gravel dropped on a dirt road once and the dump truck guys locked a board through the dump gate providing a steady dump rate. I wonder if we could employ something like that?

mark

 

[Kodiak]

I don't think that you want a loaded dump truck driving on your lawn. Talk about ruts. Actually you might want to order a load of composted topsoil with a high sand content. Roughly spread it with your loader. then use a drag to smooth. It will find the low spots. I use an old railroad tie with 16 ft of chain attached to each end in a loop. then seed and roll it with a water filled roller. If its hot there and no shade then cover with a layer of straw, and water.

 

[NYTrainer]

I'm ready for my autumn core aeration and wanted to "topdress" afterwards. I have two questions:
1. Should I make a "blend" of some sort with sand, peat and compost? (What percentages of each)
2. After throughly mixing, do you think that a 3ph mounted hopper type spreader (at maximum opening) would act as a poor man's topdresser? I don't have one (yet) so I'm not sure what you can pass through one of those things.
Thanks.

 

[Will]

I think that what you'll want to put on depends on what you've got. For instance if you've got decent soil, and just want to improve drainage, sand is great.You'll use a lot of topressing material. For example, if you want to put on 1/8" on 100' x 100' lawn, it'll take about 100 cubic feet of material. That's a lot of stuff to run through a spreader.