We are top dressing greens again this week and i thought ill explain why we are doing this ... I have two goals in mind when I top dress. The first is to make the greens smoother. We have an incredible amount of foot traffic on our greens and by no coincidence, a lot of ball marks. Both foot traffic and ball marks leave indentations in the surface and the sand helps smooth them out. The second reason is to dilute our thatch layer to keep the greens firm and draining. Thatch is the layer of dead and decaying organic matter below the surface. Too much thatch and the greens get soft. If you get the thatch level right, the greens will be much firmer, water penetration will be beter and your risk of have any pests and disease occuring will be less. A great example of this is any portion of a green that has bunker sand splashed on it all the time.
With the greens only being 6 months old and been planted with sod's, we have top dressed them every two weeks to help with the leveling of the surface. After they have been top dressed they get brushed to move the sand into the canopy and all the lower areas and this will helps smoothing them off.
The same applies to our fringes and seeing they are only 3 months old we top dress and fertilize them more aggressively to tie them in with the green on the one side and the fairway on the otherside .This is also done every two weeks in growing season.
The end result is hardly noticeable to most golfers and provides a great putting surface to play on.
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