Top dressing and Round up

As the title states these really do not go hand and hand but they do for us. We have started our annual top dressing program for the greens in conjunction with our scheduled aerification dates.  Well the question is, Why do we top dress? To answer that simply is first and foremost we want to dilute the organic material that develops through out the growing season. When we aerify the greens twice a year we are physically pulling that material out and replacing it with clean sand. Because we only do this two times a year it is important to use other methods.  The second reason is to keep the greens firm so they will accept shots and roll true. If we chose not to apply light top dressing then there would be an organic layer developing which in turn will impact the greens profile such as drainage and firmness.

Now I wanted to bring up the round up stick we have been using on the greens and collars. I know from the previous post it did not turn out well but I wanted to show you what the spots will look like after about 10 days. As seen in the photos to the right.

One last thing about the greens, we have acquired a machine to blow in top dressing material into the greens, we are working on the final tuning of it but should be extremely helpful on diluting the organic material I mentioned before. Please note the light colored new sand in the picture, this is the outcome. Once up and running I plan to do our troubling greens first then on to the rest of the course. I would like to add this practice would disappear in a few days during the growing season.