Healthy Greens Start With Healthy Roots

They key to growing a healthy plant is having healthy roots.  Plants absorb water and a high percentage of nutrients from their roots, so the deeper and healthier the roots, the more water/nutrients are accessible.  As far as turfgrass is concerned, we look for long white roots to indicate plant health.  Roots that appear brown, black, or stubby may be suffering from maladies such as nematodes, insect damage, or disease.  The white roots seen below (Bobcat #12) indicate a healthy green and frankly, we have not seen healthy roots this season on the Bobcat greens.  This is certainly an encouraging sight!
 

DryJect demo

In our constant pursuit to improve playing conditions throughout both golf courses, we have recently tested a process called DryJect.  We chose #16 Bobcat to demo the machine as it we feel the high retained moisture content in #16 makes it the ideal candidate.  The purpose of this procedure is to improve the green's ability to drain water by creating deep sand channels for the water to percolate through.  The process works like this:
1.  The DryJect machine blasts a jet of high pressure water (3000PSI) up to 12" deep into the green.

2.  Kiln-dried bagged sand is injected into the hole created by the high pressure water.  The sand channel is approximately 1/4" wide at the surface but expands to over 1" at the final depth.  In the photo below you will notice the green sand that was injected into the profile.

3.  The holes are noticeably visible and will disappear within another week with regular topdressing.  We will closely monitor the recovery of the 16th green and we are hopeful that this process can help reduce the amount of water our aging greens on the Bobcat course hold.